Anne Parilaud and William Baldwin star in Shattered Image®

<body><p>IN SHORT: A Dreadful film, strictly for eager beaver film students.</p> <p>The opening sequences of Raul Ruiz’ Shattered Image will have film students sticking to their seats, that’s how visually stunning it is. The sequence ends with a murder, which is the cue for you non-film students, who ignored Cranky’s more than generous rating and paid cold hard cash for tickets to this awful flick, to get the hell out of the theater. You’ll save yourself an additional ninety minutes of pain, boredom, bewilderment and/or disbelief as you try to piece together this tale of split personalities, dream precognition and artsy-fartsy imagery. The script, by teevee scribe Duane Poole overflows with half sentences, intentionally confusing relationships and pregnant pauses, none of which give the actors anything to work with.</p> <p>Ruiz’ international rep is such that the production team is filled with names of note (at least for those of us who read press notes): director Barbet Schroeder as producer, cinematographer Robby Muller (ten films by Wim Wenders and last year’s impressive Breaking the Waves) and Anne Parillaud the original La Femme Nikita as the femme lead. William Baldwin, star of one of the few movies that Cranky has ever walked out of (that’s a whole ‘nother story and Billy wasn’t at fault) tops the male slate. The surest sign of how bad Shattered Image is, is the godawful presence of Graham Greene, an actor whose work I admire, in a muddled double role that gets both his characters killed and forces the actor to expound in two, count ‘em two, wretched accents.</p></body>