La chouette aveugle

The Blind Owl is an extremely dense film. I would describe it as cosmic: an adaptation by a Chilean director of an Iranian novel and a Spanish play – and at the same time a regional film, since it was produced by the Maison de la culture in Havre and shot there. It has a continual mixture of dream and reality, past and present. It greatly resembles the self-reflexive mode of Latin American literature. I regard it as Ruiz’s masterwork. Ceaselessly, one image contradicts the next. It is a special film in its crucial work on subtitling: often it isn’t the dialogue which is subtitled, but rather what is not said. It’s also an essential work on colour; the film is entirely built on colour. The first time I saw this movie, it was a PAL videocassette viewed on a SECAM player; instantly the film turned black and white – and hence absolutely invisible. There is a series of colour effects within a field of whiteness, each of which expresses something particular. It is a very ‘Sternbergian’ piece, a total construction of the image: shadows and lighting, for instance, alter in the course of a shot. The film explodes with imagination and creativity. -Luc Moullet