Night Across the Street

Cinema lost a trailblazer when Raoul Ruiz died in 2011, and this film was his final gift.

The Chilean-born Ruiz, who had made films in almost every country and genre, left the world a final gift with the playful and elegiac feature Night Across the Street. An elderly postal worker on the verge of forced retirement begins to relive real and imagined memories—a trip to the movies with Beethoven as a young boy, listening to tall tales from Long John Silver, a stay in a haunted hotel, and other stories within stories. Ruiz has created one last examination of his favorite themes of fiction, history, and life itself. (107 mins., DCP)