Life Is a Dream (1986 film)

Life is a Dream
Film poster
Directed byRaúl Ruiz
Written byRaúl Ruiz (based on Pedro Calderón de la Barca)
Produced byJean-Luc Larguier
StarringSylvain Thirolle
CinematographyJacques Bouquin
Edited byMartine Bouquin
Rudolfo Wedeles
Music byJorge Arriagada
Release date
  • 1987 (1987)
Running time
103 minutes
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench

Life is a Dream (French: Mémoire des apparences) is a 1987 French surrealist art film written and directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz. It is an oneiric, metafictional, "neo-Baroque" work about the Chilean dictatorship, exile, dream, cinema and mnemonics. It was inspired by Frances A. Yates' book The Art of Memory (1966) and features characters and scenes from Life Is a Dream (1635), a Spanish Golden Age play Ruiz had directed at the Avignon Festival in 1986, in addition to pastiches of B-movies and serials of the 1930s and 1940s.