Life Is a Dream is one of the myriad of movies made by prolific Peruvian expatriate Raúl Ruiz, and not long into his new Shattered Image, I felt like shaking him until he woke up. Dolled up in bad black wig, kohl eyes, and post-Avengers attire evoking her terminatrix in La Femme Nikita, Anne Parillaud plays a hitwoman who knocks off a target in a sleek Seattle bistro. But then that pesky alarm clock rings and she wakes up in a private jet with new husband William Baldwin en route to a vacation in Jamaica.

Which is reality and which is the nightmare? Both stories are rife with intrigue and danger, with the paid killer of one version balancing out the ingenuous dupe of the other. The alarm-clock device gets tired fast, however, and Ruiz demonstrates none of the tightness of plotting without which this kind of metaphysical hokum becomes arbitrary and programmatic. Worse, his trademark startling, surrealistic images and juxtapositions are at a minimum, and he doesn't have stars like Marcello Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve (from his previous Three Lives and Only One Death and Genealogies of a Crime) to compensate. The title proves all too accurate as Shattered Image fades like an inconsequential dream. Screens at the Copley Place Saturday, September 12 at 7:20 and 9:20 p.m. and Sunday, September 13 at 12:30, 2:30 and 4:30 p.m.