The sponsors of a drug-rehabilitation center stage a robbery to maintain funding of the facility, but the loot turns out to be syndicate-owned.
Month: December 2019
Liana Franci, a wealthy young graduate in architecture, dreams of a more independent life so she cancels her wedding engagement with Fernando, an engineer, after meeting the musician Gerardo Villabruna and flees with him to Amalfi. After a while Gerardo confesses to her that, in spite of the good times together, he’s too engaged with music and has to leave for a long tour. Therefore Liana moves to Paris, where she finds an unrewarding job but also meets Massimo, a wealthy shipowner that decides to marry her. Problem is this marriage leaves her feeling caged…
The story takes place in the old streets of Porto and by the banks of the Douro River. A gang of very young kids has just accepted a new member, Carlitos, a shy boy who has “played it tough” by stealing a doll in a shop. Carlitos soon has a crush on Terezinha, the only girl in the group. The trouble is that Eduardo, the gang boss, is also in love with the pretty girl. And he will not allow any rival to challenge him.
The residents of a poor neighbourhood in Piraeus are asked to leave as modernization will take place. The prostitutes of one of the many brothels are preparing to move on. The camera follows their individual stories, their misery, shattered dreams and hopes for a better future.
Jacques Arnaud arrives in a small town somewhere in the province. Soon a citizen reports to him that strangers have broken into his house where they stole a mysterious “black dossier”.
Ellen McNulty leaves her New Jersey hamburger stand and heads west to pay a surprise visit to her son and his new bride. When Ellen arrives, her daughter-in-law mistakes her for the maid she has hired for a big party they are throwing. Rather than cause any embarrassment, Ellen goes along with the charade, which leads to many complications.
In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in the 11th arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ’60s. It is the best, and certainly the funniest, of self-reflexive deconstructions of the documentary form. Ruiz drolly exaggerates every hare-brained convention of TV reportage, from shot/reverse shot ‘suture’ and talking-head experts to establishing shots and vox pops (narrator’s note to himself: “Include street interviews ad absurdum”.)