La Telenovela Errante
Director: Raúl Ruiz, Valeria Sarmiento
Writer: Raúl Ruiz
Cast: Luis Alarcón, Patricia Rivadeneira, Francisco Reyes, Consuelo Castillo, Roberto Poblete, Liliana García, Mauricio Pesutic, Leticia Garrido
Seen on: 29./30.4.2026

Plot:
The world is a telenovela and each telenovela is its own world. As the characters from one telenovela cross over to others, crash into each other’s realities and storylines, things become increasingly strange and surreal.

La Telenovela Errante is difficult to explain and even harder to understand. But if you just lean into its surrealism, it is definitely entertaining.

I was unfamiliar with Ruiz as a director before seeing this film, but I gather that he is not the most accessible of directors out there. La Telenovela Errante is definitely a case in point, made maybe slightly more mysterious by having been shot by Ruiz himself in the 90s, but only finished by Sarmiento, his editor and widow, after his death. It certainly adds a layer when the film is finished by behind the scenes footage of the actual shoot, showing Ruiz proclaiming the shoot’s end.

It gives us a handful of scenes from different telenovelas. Those scenes are already pretty surreal on their own, with strange dialogue, delivered with a lot of panache and a surprising and awe-inspiring amount of straight-facedness. But then the same actors take up different roles in other scenes, and sometimes they might even be the same people transplanted from one telenovela to another.

But there is no logic to it, I don’t think. Exept dream logic. No secret decyphering to be aspired to. It is like a chain of associations that doesn’t lead anywhere but along its own path. As an audience, we will probably automatically start to look for more in its narrative, but I say, the real pleasure is in the nonsense, and not some secret sense.

I for one didn’t expect it to work as well for me as it did, but I found the film often funny and definitely engaging. It had me laughing, and it just tickled my brain in an unusual and enjoyable way. I am not running out to find more of Ruiz‘ work after having seen it, but I definitely wouldn’t run from watching more.

Summarizing: if you like weird and nonsensical, this is a definite must-see.