Love Torn in a Dream

Original title: Combat d'amour en songe

2000
2h

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

Coming to you as if from a dream half-remembered, two oneiric fantasies by the great Chilean fabulist Raúl Ruiz. First, a great guide - with pages torn out - for beginners, this picture has ... Read allComing to you as if from a dream half-remembered, two oneiric fantasies by the great Chilean fabulist Raúl Ruiz. First, a great guide - with pages torn out - for beginners, this picture has stories-within-stories covering nearly the whole range of Ruiz's diverse passions, from pu... Read allComing to you as if from a dream half-remembered, two oneiric fantasies by the great Chilean fabulist Raúl Ruiz. First, a great guide - with pages torn out - for beginners, this picture has stories-within-stories covering nearly the whole range of Ruiz's diverse passions, from pulp to intellectual.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.1/10

394

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 1 win & 1 nomination total

Photos

Featured review

10/10

Oneiric Fairytale of Love and Deception

Inexplicable. Mesmerizing. Magical. Perhaps the most complicated thing I've had the pleasure of piecing together. How do you even begin to make something so infinite in scope? Kaleidoscopic and radiate. Stories beaming out in geometric patterns of fiction within the fiction of the story being told. It exists in a state of variables, branching out and operating in limitless possibilities. All of it contained by a handful of characters' lives that work in tandem with a fairytale unbound by traditional rules.

And despite its seemingly disorderly approach, all these branch paths are connected to the same tree-to the same journey-merging itself into a singular form. Cohesion exists in fleeting glances, slipping just out of reach before it could make itself completely known. The pleasure of the mystery, of the hunt, sustained. Oneiric yet tactile, with defined order and space. A universal, architectural binding agent. However, it's the dimensions of the world created that remain troublesome; length and width without a foreseeable end.

Dreams about the past taking place in the future of the world's making. Fantasies and historical events within the story hold weight by their interplay with any given reality it reveals unforeseen knowledge to. It's deceptive but never malicious. Plot points mutated by any little revelation. In its lies lies the truth.

I couldn't look away. Slack-jawed, sitting at the edge of my seat. Bewildered and in awe at what was unfolding before me. And to think, at the center of all this madness is a simple tale of love. I don't think I could ever adequately describe this. Consider this the 1st of many failed attempts.