Tres tristes tigres

“Suddenly there was a chance to make a film in which Chileans would recognise themselves.” Raúl Ruiz’s first completed film was also the first of three remarkable features shot consecutively with the same precious camera – the others were Aldo Francia’s Valparaiso mi amor and Miguel Littin’s El Chacal de Nahueltoro – which would proclaim Chile’s brief ‘new wave’ to the outside world, before that country plunged into the fraught experiment of Allende’s Popular Unity. Based on a melodramatic play about the scheming of a group of lower middle class characters (including a brother who prostitutes his sister), the film shows a variety of influences. While the actors were keen to break away from the European conventions required in their stage work, and to create authentic Chilean types, Ruiz was influenced by Nouvelle Vague models of decentred narrative. An important theme is the everyday violence and moral cynicism typical of an alienated urban class who are neither proletarian nor part of Chile’s Europeanised bourgeoisie. The film’s temporal ambiguity, seeking to represent the suspended tempo of Chilean life, looks forward to Ruiz’s later more stylised and cerebral projects. Thanks to new tax laws favouring cinema and popular enthusiasm, it was a modest box-office success. -Ian Christie