Raul Ruiz’s first completed Chilean feature (1968) is not one of his best works, but it does showcase his peculiar trait of elaborating a plot that is flattened into incoherence or irrelevance for the sake of a labyrinthine formal structure. Filmed in Santiago almost exclusively with a handheld camera following a number of not very interesting characters, it was inspired in part by Mexican melodramas — demonstrating that Ruiz saw himself working in relation to a B-film tradition from the beginning. (JR)