My opinion about Portuguese cinema has never been the best. I have always considered that, despite the beauty of the places in our country and the quality of the actors and technical personnel, there are no directors capable of doing something that is, at the same time, minimally palatable to the general public and technically well done. Either Portuguese directors opt for a vain and irritating academicism, and make films that never leave the festivals and end up forgotten, or they surrender to the money-making machine and release idiotic comedies with low-level jokes.
This film, considered by many to be one of the best made by Manoel de Oliveira, is a good example of the academic, dull and unintelligible film I mentioned above. I believe the film was a delight at festivals, and I don't think it's to be despised that the film has won awards and some good reviews in Tokyo and São Paulo... but the fact is that, after almost thirty years, it's a film forgotten, even by nerds.
For the film, Oliveira asked writer Agustina Bessa-Luís for an original script. Without any kind of demerit, the writer gave her a story that, in essence, is an adaptation of "Madame Bovary", which passes through the Douro scenarios and is inspired by them to obtain a certain literary lyricism. It will certainly be an interesting book, but it is not a good story for the cinema, and Oliveira ignored that. Watching the movie and reading a book are the same thing, thanks in part to a narrator who doesn't shut up for a minute and who seems to be reading aloud.
The story follows Ema, the main character, from youth to death. Contrary to what many argue, I think the character is not an innocent teenager, despite her young age: she knows she is very beautiful, she knows the effect this has on men and seeks him out, having fun like a Lolita. The rest of the film is an anachrony, with the characters acting as if they lived in the 19th century and not the 1980s: Ema's marriage to Carlos de Paiva, owner of Vale Abraão Estate, is arranged by her father; the couple's very formal social life almost emulates that of Flaubert's nineteenth-century bourgeois; the habit of sleeping in separate beds is nonsense, and the explanation of the doctor going out at dawn to see the sick simply does not make sense. Oliveira and Bessa-Luís tried to recreate a 19th century bourgeois experience in the present day, but the portrait is anachronistic and unbelievable.
The film has several reasonably well-known actors, some of them with a past to consider, in theatre, cinema and television. However, none of them do well here. Leonor Silveira tried everything to be elegant and seductive, and the way the actress moves and observes is, in fact, hypnotic... but also proud and vain. The character proves to be unpalatable in his boring and tiresome monotony and in his affected, arrogant ways. Cécile Sanz de Alba, the young actress who played Ema as a teenager, is magnificent, beautiful, but empty of content, and only does what she has to do. Luís Miguel Cintra is a good actor, but here he gave life to an empty man, an inert and amorphous "cuc...old", without any emotion. Ruy de Carvalho is a shadow of himself. Diogo Dória and José Pinto can add little or nothing.
Technically, the film has several points of merit, I recognize that. The constant breaking of the so-called "fourth wall", with interpellations and looks directly at the camera, as well as the use of a narrator, lead the audience to be part of the film as a mute, observer character. The film makes good use of the landscape of the Douro Valley and the farms and stately homes where it was filmed, although certain details are inconceivable (the use of candlelight, for example). Cinematography is, without a doubt, a striking point, with the use of mirrors, shadows and various light effects that Oliveira worked tirelessly. I admire and respect that, but it's not enough to make a good film, it doesn't make up for the monotonous atmosphere or the excessively slow pace of a film with funeral tics and a soundtrack to match.
