Life Is a Dream (1986)
- Original title
- Mémoire des apparences
- Directed by
- Raúl Ruiz
- Genre
- drama film, fantasy film
- Country
- France
- Runtime
- 1h 43m
- Rating
- 7.6 of 10 from 7 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A man returns to his homeland under a dictatorship and becomes tangled in dreams, memories, and old movie fragments. The film mixes history, a classic Spanish play, and cheap old serials to create a puzzle about exile and the nature of reality.
dreamlikesurrealcerebralunsettlingpastichemetafictionalslow-burnphilosophical
What happens
Life is a Dream (French: Mémoire des apparences) is a 1986 French surrealist art film written and directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. It is an oneiric, metafictional, "neo-Baroque" work about the Chilean dictatorship, exile, dream, cinema and mnemonics. It was inspired by Frances A. Yates' book The Art of Memory (1966) and features characters and scenes from Life Is a Dream (1635), a Spanish Golden Age play Ruiz had directed at the Avignon Festival in 1986, in addition to pastiches of B-movies and serials of the 1930s and 1940s. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
My Case (1986)
The Blind Owl (1987)
Scene of the Crime (1986)
Les Longs Manteaux (1986)
A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986)
Havre (1986)
Faire la fête (1986)
Corps et biens (1986)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.