Raúl Ruiz´s cinema is always structured around a strange game between order and disorder – or perhaps, the strangeness of an ordered disorder. That Day is no exception. We are thrown into the middle of a family melodrama, full of betrayals, past secrets, conspiracies. If looked at closely, it’s clear that Ruiz executes the genre rules with a great deal of respect. At the same time, he takes pleasure in playing with these rules, disclosing to us the absurdities behind all conventions. The filmmaker knows exactly what he’s doing. However, within the film’s construction, the series of absurdities gives a freshness to the conventions, while the series of conventions also guarantees a centre to the absurdities.

Ruiz builds his whole film around Elsa Zylberstein, and the actress doesn’t let him down. Her character’s insanity transforms everything around her – even the weather, since it is a beautiful sunny day in the middle of a Swiss winter. After all, Ruiz had to give her this perfect day. To Elsa comes the devil – or rather, a psychopath who acts by impulse (following the will of God, he says). He eliminates everyone around her – without her knowing it, they are trying to harm her. He is almost an exterminating angel, watching after her. Ruiz leads Elsa through this doll’s game full of doubles, in the same way that he leads the audience – a spectacle that the filmmaker’s mise en scène makes very open.

Part of the fun in Ruiz’s cinema is that he is a filmmaker who simultaneously feels a huge desire to exert control – to guarantee the auteur’s signature, one could say – but at the same time he experiences an anarchic pleasure in letting the film escape from his hands. The joy of That Day comes from those moments of escape.