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DIRECTED BY: Raoul Ruiz
FEATURING: Anne Alvaro, Melvil Poupaud, Hugues Quester
PLOT: Young Isidore lives a sheltered life in the Overseas French Territories During the Second World War, until an orphan boy lures her into crime and an escape to a mythic island.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Absurdities follow fast upon one another in Ruiz’s hazy, dreamy narrative.
COMMENTS: Raúl Ruiz is one of the most prominent surrealist film directors of the latter half of the twentieth century. An exile from Pinochet’s Chile, Ruiz produced most of his movies in France; the 1970s and 1980s were his most formally radical years.
As with Three Crowns of the Sailor (1982), maritime adventures inspire City of Pirates‘ narrative. Any similarities with the early work are superficial, however; the focus here lies elsewhere. The plot revolves around a young woman named Isidore, who lives a middle-class, sheltered life with her family in the Overseas French Territories during World War Two. From the beginning, the violence of real historical events is tangibly nodded to through newspaper headlines. Our heroine’s mother states, “When we [humanity] get used to something, we start to crave something else,” suggesting a tale about humans’ propensity for war and destruction. The narrative moves forward through the appearance of an orphan boy, who lures Isidore into a series of absurd crimes as they make their way to a mythic island. There, a new series of allegorical misadventures ensues.
Political undertones become loud and clear through the absurdity of the events, which verge on the grotesque. Even without graphic imagery, the underlying violence haunts the viewers, while dominating and guiding our protagonists. At times, the war seems an abstraction, something happening in a parallel reality, like an imaginary naval skirmish in a garden of flowers. Yet, you can feel the seed of violence it plants under the skin.
The cinematography enhances this sentiment through blurry visual effects and over-stylized, almost expressionistic high-contrast lighting. Pastel tones, recalling fairy tales or old postcards, merge with a darker color palette and with sepia tones. But the most iconic visual element is the sporadic use of uncommon POVs foregrounding small details while marginalizing the main action, creating a sense of disorientation. In one of the most emblematic shots, Ruiz even put the camera inside an actor’s mouth.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: