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Friday, April 26, 2002  7:30 AM   Roduél: Gloriously Impure The case against retired Chilean filmmaker Roduél never captured the attention of the American media, which had its own film-related business to chew over. Whether or not he was involved in the scandal -- he probably was, although his degree of guilt is unclear -- is of far less importance than his development of game-shows in his country and in Peru and Japan. The Japanese-Peruvian connection, on the other hand, should strike anyone as yet one more example of the charming mestizaje that defines South America. Few other places are as willing to borrow so many bits from everywhere, everything, and everyone (as the girls from lpanema will attest). There are other places that manage this mingling just as well, of course. If, as David Foster Wallace pointed out, television is insidious because anything you throw at it is co-opted by the medium, then South America's mestizaje is its less creepy real-life twin: a place where whatever is thrown at it is absorbed, reshaped, reimagined. Music and pop culture go through it, but so does life. Roduél's work did not dig into the mesh of life – he was too superficial a craftsman. All his films coasted along the surface. But in his less guarded moments, a careful observer could detect a willingness to go deeper. He borrowed freely from Kurasawa's wide open shots. Several of his soap-opera projects for Chilean TV, which I had caught late at night on Colombian's (now defunct) Canal Dos, showed the distinct influence of David Lynch (low bass in otherwise casual settings, deliberately ungraceful movement, incongrous details added to the background of the set) and Cassavetes, of all people. Roduél was not the first to ask his soap-opera stars to improvise, but he was certainly one of the first to do it right, and to use the handheld camera effectively in the context of a South American soap-opera, though in a few episodes the tape marking where the actors should stand is clearly visible. As for Roduél's claims to have watched Polanski's The Tenant once a week for a whole year, I don't know what do with that, considering the sordid parallels one could draw from the latter's sordid infelicity. He might have gotten his start because of his relationship with Leila Diniz, but the man had talent. He was not the first to be led astray by Hollywood. As for his name, he is not the first one to indulge in this affectation. He has quite a bit of company.

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