With the indispensable aid of his widow and collaborator Valeria Sarmiento, the prolific Raúl Ruiz has given the world another film from beyond the grave.  That might seem strange for some directors, but this partnering of living and dead is right on brand for the esoteric exile, whose films always operated in liminal spaces, obscuring the difference between dream and reality, night and day, conscious and unconscious.  “The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror,” officially co-directed by Sarmiento and Ruiz (who passed in 2011), is the completion of footage shot by Ruiz in 1967 for what would have been his debut, but instead sat unfinished due to lack of funding for sound and was forgotten after Ruiz’s exile in 1973. 

Continue reading ‘The Tango Of The Widower’: Nightmares Come To Life In Raúl Ruiz’s Rediscovered First Film [NYFF Review] at The Playlist.