La noche de enfrente

This last film by Raúl Ruiz, who died in 2011, is an adaptation of the novel by Hernan del Solar and can be regarded as a long take through themes that the Chilean filmmaker tackled in over 100 films. Music, literature, cinema, flowing and circular time, childhood and political exile, as a result of which he was forced to leave his homeland for many years.
It is Wednesday when the film starts. Don Celso has to retire in five days’ time. He doesn’t want to, even though he declares that he has no more ideas to enable him to do his work. When asked, he says he is waiting for a foreigner who is coming to murder him. Ruiz allows the present and past to overlap increasingly in the course of the film and, just like life and death, they are no longer separate categories. A melancholy reflection of what Ruiz was thinking about at the end of his life, but he always maintains his characteristically light tone.

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