Palomita blanca

Based on the popular novel, PALOMITA BLANCA tells the story of a working-class student who falls for a well-to-do young man in the twilight of the Unidad Popular era. Their fleeting, fragile love is ofered as an emblem of the social tensions simmering below the gloss of naivety and freedom; love between rich and poor was impossible, real only on television. Through Raúl Ruiz’s free adaptation (or “adoption”, as he would put it), the novel is transformed into a self-reflexive melodrama that imitates but also playfully mocks the soap opera. Ruiz’s first big-budget production, PALOMITA BLANCA was first ofered to other directors as a surefire hit because of its coming-of-age theme and use of popular music, namely the pioneering psychedelic rock band Los Jaivas.
Completed just before the coup d’état, PALOMITA BLANCA was embargoed by the Pinochet authorities before its release and locked in the vaults of the shuttered Chile Films, where it was eventually forgotten. In October 1973, Ruiz went into exile and PALOMITA BLANCA waited nineteen years to be rediscovered and recognised as both a landmark of Chilean cinema and the document of a sincelost geography, language and country. (Dominga Sotomayor)

Raúl Ruiz: TRES TRISTES TIGRES (1968), EL REALISMO SOCIALISTA (1973), DIALOGUES OF EXILES (1975), BÉRÉNICE (1983), POINT DE FUITE (1984), MÉMOIRE DES APPARENCES (1986), L’OEIL QUI MENT (1992), FADO MAJEUR ET MINEUR (1994), TROIS VIES ET UNE SEULE MORT (1996), GÉNÉALOGIES D’UN CRIME (1997), COMÉDIE DE L’INNOCENCE (2000), KLIMT (2006), MISTÉRIOS DE LISBOA (2010)