Doctor Chance

Development and casting

Ossang began developing the project after Le Trésor des îles Chiennes. The screenplay took several years to reach production, during which he also worked on the literary project Au bord de l'aurore. According to Ossang, filmmaker Raúl Ruiz encouraged him to consider Chile as a location after the project had stalled in France.

The character played by Joe Strummer was named for the rock singer Vince Taylor. Ossang had initially hoped to work with Taylor himself, but the singer died in 1991, before the film could be made. Strummer, who had acted in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train (1989), was initially reluctant to return to acting. In a press conference held during the Chilean shoot, he recalled that Ossang's persistence and their meeting in London persuaded him to accept the part. Strummer described the character as a guardian figure representing freedom and rock music. Film scholar Nicole Brenez later reported that Strummer had described Ossang as the only filmmaker with whom he would immediately work again.

Filming in Chile

Ossang first visited Chile in 1993 for the Viña del Mar International Film Festival, where he presented Le Trésor des îles Chiennes. He returned with Elvire in 1994, traveling through the country and exploring possible locations. The film was eventually shot in 1996 with a crew combining Chilean technicians and performers with visiting European collaborators. Carlo Bettin served as an executive producer and Louis Bronsard as assistant director.

The production was troubled by logistical difficulties and accidents. During location scouting, Ossang encountered problems in the mountainous region around Mamiña, while the considerable distances between locations and the expense of filming in the Atacama Desert complicated his plans. The production encountered difficulties from the outset, including the replacement of a French actor on the first day of filming. Ossang nevertheless found encouragement in Joe Strummer, who spent three weeks in Chile, and in the solidarity of the young Chilean crew members, many of whom were in their early twenties.

Near the end of filming, a Cadillac used in the production struck cinematographer Rémy Chevrin and two camera assistants. According to film writer Michèle Collery, the accident interrupted filming while the injured technicians received hospital treatment. One suffered a fracture and had to return to France, although production subsequently resumed. Collery also linked Chevrin's shoulder injury to the unstable handheld camerawork in the film's final sequence. Ossang later recalled that Joe Strummer, who spent approximately three weeks filming in northern Chile, brought encouragement to the troubled production. The French production company went bankrupt after the film was completed.

Cinematography, production design and music

Doctor Chance was Ossang's first feature shot in color. He later explained that the decision to shoot in color was partly motivated by the prospect of securing support from Canal+. Ossang nevertheless sought a photographic treatment retaining some of the contrast of his earlier black-and-white work. A technician from the French laboratory 3 Lumières modified the Chilean processing equipment to allow the color negative to be developed without the usual bleaching stage, retaining silver in the film emulsion. The process required extensive testing but produced the heightened contrast and saturated colors Ossang wanted. Cinematographer Rémy Chevrin photographed the film.

Ossang initially hoped to work again with production designer Jean-Vincent Puzos, who had collaborated on Le Trésor des îles Chiennes, but Puzos was unavailable. He instead recruited Santiago Isidro Pin, a painter whose work became central to the film's depiction of art forgery. Although the forged paintings were originally intended to appear only as rolled canvases, Pin offered to reproduce the artworks themselves. Using an art-history book as a reference, he created approximately thirty paintings, including copies of works by François Boucher and Egon Schiele.

The film's original music was composed by Messageros Killers Boys (MKB), Ossang's experimental punk-rock band. The soundtrack also incorporates music associated with Nick Cave, The Gun Club and The Stooges.

Original release

Doctor Chance was shown at the 1997 Locarno Film Festival before its French theatrical release on February 25, 1998, distributed by Les Films sans Frontières. The film subsequently circulated at international festivals, including the 1998 Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, where it was listed as Dr. Chance.

Its Chilean exhibition was considerably more limited than the publicity surrounding the shoot. Writing in laFuga, Iván Pinto Veas and Felipe Blanco described festival screenings and a single presentation at the Catholic University's cultural center. Blanco stated that he did not believe the film had received a regular commercial theatrical release in Chile, although he did not claim to have established that conclusively.

The original French theatrical release recorded 5,416 admissions, including 2,742 in Paris, where the film played on three screens over five weeks. Ossang later discussed the financial difficulties surrounding the production and the obstacles he encountered in financing another feature film.

Critical reception

Contemporary French reviews emphasized the film's unconventional handling of familiar genres. Writing in Libération on February 25, 1998, Didier Péron described how Ossang transformed elements of the thriller, road movie and western through rock mythology, literary references, heightened colors and aphoristic dialogue. He anticipated that the film's disregard for narrative conventions would irritate some viewers, but praised its formal invention and poetic qualities.

In Les Inrockuptibles, Vincent Ostria likewise situated the film between crime cinema and experimental filmmaking. He admired its visual composition and rhythmic editing, contrasting the elaborate interiors of the criminal underworld with the Chilean road journey. For Ostria, the sound of Ossang's dialogue was often more important than the literal meaning of the words or the intricacies of the plot. Thomas Cantaloube, reviewing the film for L'Humanité on February 26, 1998, approached it through questions of art, geography and political power. His review was excerpted in the program of the 2022 Journées cinématographiques.

The film continued to attract critical attention in later screenings. In a 2018 Screen Slate essay accompanying a New York retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, Chris Shields compared its treatment of forgery and crime with Wim Wenders's The American Friend and Jean-Luc Godard's genre films. He emphasized its fragmented structure and voice-over, and contrasted the enclosed city scenes with the desert landscapes and distorted rock soundtrack. For the film's 2021 return to Locarno, Adriano Ercolani similarly placed it within a tradition of noir and road cinema, noting its punk soundtrack and Strummer's presence.

Reviewing the restored films in Le Monde in August 2022, Clarisse Fabre situated Doctor Chance alongside Ossang's preceding features, emphasizing their connections with silent cinema, Expressionism and industrial music. She described the film's Chilean journey as bringing together an espionage narrative, a rebellious young man and a dancer, and singled out Elvire's presence as central to its feverish road-movie atmosphere.

Restoration and rerelease

The film's 4K restoration was presented in the Histoire(s) du cinéma section of the 74th Locarno Film Festival in August 2021. A further screening took place at the Journées cinématographiques in Saint-Denis on February 3, 2022, accompanied by a discussion with Ossang and members of the cast. The restored film returned to French cinemas on August 24, 2022, through Solaris Distribution, alongside Ossang's first two features.