City of Pirates (1983)

Despite the title, there are no pirates anywhere in this movie. Not a single one. In fact, why is the movie called City of Pirates when the location is actually the Isle of Pirates? Your guess is as good as mine. Ruiz's movie plays out like a fairy tale with no real discernible plot, at least not in the traditional beginning-middle-end sense of the word. City of Pirates is ostensibly about Isidore, the maid/adopted daughter of a family living in a seaside Portuguese town (the film for some reason is said to be set a week before the Carnation Revolution/end of the colonial war, but why this setting, I have no idea, as it is only mentioned offhand once in the film) who one night finds a homicidal ten-year old boy living in her closet. Together they kill the father and her fiance and flee to the Isle of Pirates where Isidore is kidnapped by a man named Toby who in turn is all the members of his family. And that is about it. Ruiz's film is more of a collage of dreams, memories, narration, music, and images of the most striking variety (one in particular has the camera placed inside a man's mouth looking out). It is by turns hypnotic, pretentious, beautiful, maddening, enthralling, and boring. In the world of Euro-art cinema Ruiz has no equals. Why he still remains so under-appreciated is a mystery to me. I want to live inside of this film.