Shattered Image (1998)
Director: Raul Ruiz
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
With his first American film, eccentric exiled Chilean Ruiz may be making a foray into the kind of sex 'n' thrills normally associated with straight-to-video schlock, but it's as ambitious, weird and intriguing as one would expect. Basically this is a lurid psycho-thriller in which Parillaud lives two lives: one as a rich heiress who suspects her new husband (Baldwin) is planning to kill her, the other as a femme fatale hit woman. Which is real, which the dream? She, for one, has no idea, and nor probably will you. Not that it matters, since this is Ruiz at his most playful, messing about irreverently with generic clichés and tropes, eliciting some dazzlingly exotic trompe l'oeil images from the amazing Robby Müller, and revelling not only in his two leads' robotic performances but (not once but twice) in a passing Chinaman who wanders very obviously into shot at a key moment. Absurd nonsense but great fun.Author: GA
Cast & crew
Director: Raul Ruiz
Producer: Barbet Schroeder, Susan Hoffman, Lloyd A Silverman
Cast: Anne Parillaud, William Baldwin, Lisanne Falk, Graham Greene, Bulle Ogier, Billy Wilmott, O'Neil Peart, Leonie Forbes full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 103 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.



What do you think?
Post your review now