City of Pirates

Raúl Ruiz's 1984 film rejects narrative logic from the outset. A young woman working as a maid on an island meets a small boy who has killed his family; she travels with him to a tiny island of pirates and there encounters a man with several personalities. Events do not follow one another, scenes join according to the rules of dreams, and the characters lose their identities. Ruiz, a Chilean, went into exile in France under Pinochet, and the rootlessness and preoccupation with displacement in his films is read alongside that history. The visual language is highly distinctive: wide-angle lenses, strange colour filters and compositions that keep warping the space. A very young Melvil Poupaud appears. Who it's for: viewers seeking experimental and surrealist cinema and films where narrative dissolves. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a followable story; the film never promises one.