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IFFR KINO #49: Tres Tristes Tigres (1968)
Special IFFR KINO

IFFR KINO #49: Tres Tristes Tigres (1968)

Hoezo in KINO

Join us in KINO Rotterdam on Wednesday 3 January, for the fourth and last screening of this eighth season of IFFR KINO: Raúl Ruiz’s Tres tristes tigres (1968). Anyone attempting to read aloud the name will quickly realise this title is a Spanish-language tongue-twister, one that most of the film’s drunken leading characters would themselves struggle to say. That should give you some clues as to the nature of this eccentric, disjointed, slice-of-life portrait of 1960s Chilean society.

Credits

Regie
Raúl Ruiz
Cast
Shenda Román, Nelson Villagra, Luis Alarcón, Jaime Vadell
Genre
Comedy, Drama
Speelduur
100 minutes
Land
Chile
Taal
Spanish
Ondertiteling
English

Storyline

Bars, alleyways and seedy hotels form the backdrop of this booze-soaked drama that follows a group of alienated urban middle-class characters fraught with moral malaise. The two principal tigres tristes are Tito, a car-dealer that’s just moved to Santiago, and his sister Amanda – a stripper and prostitute. The decentred narratives and temporal ambiguity mix neorealism, nouvelle vague and welcome comparisons to John Cassavetes.

Raúl Ruiz’s first completed film won him a shared Golden Leopard for best film at the Locarno Film Festival in 1969. It was part of a brief Chilean ‘new wave’, shot using the same precious camera as Aldo Francia’s Valparaiso mi amor (1969) and Miguel Littin’s El Chacal de Nahueltoro (1969), that wouldn’t last beyond the 1973 Pinochet coup which forced Ruiz to flee is home country. – Fraser White

© Baris Azman