Shattered Image

With his first American film, eccentric exiled Chilean Ruiz may be making a foray into the kind of sex 'n' thrills normally associated with straight-to-video schlock, but it's as ambitious, weird and intriguing as one would expect. Basically this is a lurid psycho-thriller in which Parillaud lives two lives: one as a rich heiress who suspects her new husband (Baldwin) is planning to kill her, the other as a femme fatale hit woman. Which is real, which the dream? She, for one, has no idea, and nor probably will you. Not that it matters, since this is Ruiz at his most playful, messing about irreverently with generic clichés and tropes, eliciting some dazzlingly exotic trompe l'oeil images from the amazing Robby Müller, and revelling not only in his two leads' robotic performances but (not once but twice) in a passing Chinaman who wanders very obviously into shot at a key moment. Absurd nonsense but great fun.