The Wandering Soap Opera

This material, shot by Raúl Ruiz in Chile, remained unfinished for years; after the director's death Valeria Sarmiento completed the film and it was released in 2018. It consists of episodes that do not connect, each built like a scene from a soap opera. Ruiz's starting point is the idea that Chilean reality is itself an assembly of such serials; the playing is deliberately overblown and the dialogue keeps drawing attention to its own artifice. There is no unified story. Transitions between scenes are abrupt and locations repeat; the narrative imitates the language of television while breaking it. The cast is drawn largely from Chilean theatre. Who it's for: those who follow Ruiz and formal experiment. Who it's not for: viewers expecting narrative; the film is deliberately scattered and reaches no conclusion.