Ballet aquatique

Ballet aquatique

2012 · 50 min · ★ 5.5 · Documentary

In one of his very last projects, Raul Ruiz celebrates the films of his historical predecessor Jean Painlevé, a documentary innovator whose work always blended science with surrealism. Ruiz and friends further perfect the art of mystification. Why it is so difficult to count fish in an aquarium? Ruiz, his loyal actor Melvil Poupaud and his producer François Margolin come up with a wide range of hypotheses. With their bone-dry wit, they keep up the tradition of the French pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions. (IFFR)

Directed by Raúl Ruiz · Written by Raúl Ruiz

Your Rating

Cast

Make it a double feature

2h 17m together

Ballet aquatique

Days in the Country

Both from Raúl Ruiz.

More from Raúl RuizSee all →

The One-Eyed Man

The One-Eyed Man · 1980

The One-Eyed Man

With his body now devoid of substance and able to fly, N. wanders looking for a way to return to life and reintegrate into the world.

Chuquiago

Chuquiago · 1977

Racial, social and cultural aspects of La Paz (called Chuquiago by the Aymaras) seen through four stories.

Days in the Country

Days in the Country · 2004

Days in the Country

In a bar in Santiago, two old men talk over their past. This is a strange discussion. In fact, they talk of themselves as if they were dead. We don't know what is true or false, what is dream or reality.

Of Great Events and Ordinary People

Of Great Events and Ordinary People · 1980

Of Great Events and Ordinary People

MovieDocumentary

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh 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. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.

Manoel’s Destinies

Manoel’s Destinies · 1984

Manoel’s Destinies

MovieFantasyAdventure

When the child Manuel wanders into a garden that is off-limits to him, he meets an unidentified fisherman, and another boy -- the boy is actually himself several years down the road. Manuel experiences three different versions of his encounters in the garden, revealing that fate can have several twists and turns in one's life, depending on decisions that are made early on.

Manuel on the Island of Wonders

Manuel on the Island of Wonders · 1984

Manuel on the Island of Wonders

SeriesKidsSci-Fi & Fantasy

This three part French TV serial for children (alternate versions exist as a feature, Manoel’s Destinies, and a 4 part Portuguese TV serial, Adventure in Madeira) is the favourite of many devotees of Raúl Ruiz. This is because it ties the enchantment and mystery of Lewis Carroll, Carlo Collodi and the Brothers Grimm to the filmmaker’s experiments with narrative strategies and what he calls the pentaludic model of storytelling (where characters are thrown dice-like into combinations and situations governed by the play of Chance and Destiny).

Palombella rossa

Palombella rossa · 1989

Palombella rossa

MovieComedyDrama

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

Three Crowns of the Sailor

Three Crowns of the Sailor · 1991

Three Crowns of the Sailor

MovieAdventureFantasy

Shortly after murdering his professor, a young man encounters a sailor who offers him a position on his ship in exchange for 3 Danish crowns and his attention as he recounts his life story.

On Top of the Whale

On Top of the Whale · 1982

On Top of the Whale

MovieFantasyDrama

A parody of anthropology, linguistics, and cultural imperialism. The film follows an unlikely team of linguists into the wilds of an ersatz Patagonia to study the last speakers of a dying language. That language apparently consists of a single word, which therefore means everything.

The Insomniac on the Bridge

The Insomniac on the Bridge · 1985

The Insomniac on the Bridge

This quickly-filmed avant-garde farce by prolific director Raul Ruiz features an insomniac (Michel Lonsdale) whose main preoccupation is surreptitiously watching private matters -- he is a voyeur. He and an equally disreputable acquaintance rape a woman alongside the Seine, a crime made all the worse because she is pregnant. The rest of this slow-paced film deals with the consequences of that action.

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting · 1978

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

MovieDramaMystery

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.

Brise-glace

Brise-glace · 1990

MovieDocumentary

Collaborative experimental project on which three director made different films about the Swedish icebreaker "Frej".

Genealogies of a Crime

Genealogies of a Crime · 1997

Genealogies of a Crime

MovieCrimeDrama

An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.

Mysteries of Lisbon

Mysteries of Lisbon · 2011

Mysteries of Lisbon

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure and misfortune in the convulsed Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. (A longer television version of the film of the same name, released in 2010.)

Three Lives and Only One Death

Three Lives and Only One Death · 1996

Three Lives and Only One Death

MovieComedyCrime

Four intertwining stories of bizarre occurrences in Paris featuring a man who was stolen away by fairies, a professor who becomes a tramp, the lovers who inherit a chateau – and the last tale that connects all that has gone before.

To Each His Own Cinema

To Each His Own Cinema · 2007

To Each His Own Cinema

MovieComedyDrama

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter