Night Across the Street
| Night Across the Street | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Raúl Ruiz |
| Produced by | Christian Aspee, François Margolin |
| Written by | Raúl Ruiz (based on Hernán del Solar) |
| Starring | Christian Vadim |
| Music by | Jorge Arriagada |
| Cinematography | Inti Briones |
| Edited by | Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento, Christian Aspee |
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Release date
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Running time
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107 minutes |
| Country | Chile |
| Language | Spanish, French |
Night Across the Street (Spanish: La noche de enfrente) is a 2012 Chilean drama film directed by Raúl Ruiz. It was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, as well as at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, the 2012 New York Film Festival and the 2013 Hong Kong International Film Festival.
La Noche de Enfrente or Night Across the Street is Raul Ruiz’s final film. As Ruiz knew his time on thie earth was coming to an end, he created a film about the idea of death itself. In this film, there are three dimensions of time that Ruiz plays with. Time as a dimension can be explained further here
The film begins with the protagonist Don Celso (Sergio Hernández) in a classroom taught by a famous French writer Jean Giono (Christian Vadim). In this session, Giono lectures about the use of language and how phrases used in different languages simply do not work. As everyone’s eyes are closed, an alarm goes off in Don Celso’s pocket which is a reminder for him to take his medicine. This is followed up by a discussion between Don Celso and Jean Giono outside of class. They both discuss how time stumbles along in life which is ultimately what happens in the entire film. They mention how time is like marbles in which Don Celso points out that these marbles can be worn as a necklace. This refers to the film when Don Celso explores different fantasies in his life as his current self or child-self shortly after. This entire sequence is an exploration of time that he has with himself.
Immediately after, the story takes place in what we believe to be his current time. He is working at an office where they write poetry. Don Celso is shown at his desk, away from everybody as he is in his own state of mind, moving his hands like puppets talking to one another. His coworker points out that he has never done this before, but with the previous sequence that we have seen, we can assume that he is moving his hands this way because he is reenacting his conversation that he just had with Jean Giono. This could mean that he is in another dimension of time until he is alerted by his boss. We later learn in this sequence that Don Celso is only days away from retirement and that he is going to have a retirement party the next day.
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