Lisboetas

Lisbon is a city built over hills. You walk by the river, in front of the Pombal illumined downtown, built on the wreckage of 1755's earthquake and you can view down-up the whole historical centre, protected by the castle. Beautiful view. Go up, reach that castle, and look down, the opposite view, embraced by the river, also great, also gorgeous. The light is special, every cinema lover should know that, Wenders knows it (Lisbon Story). The colors are soft pale yellow, water pink, roofs argyle red. When you get to the castle, pick up a pair of field-glasses, overview the city, look to the other side of the river, and closely the old parts. yellow becomes, vivid blue, you'll get black and white, high contrasts, and a city that doesn't come in postcards. Through those field-glasses, you'll see this film.

Lisbon, multi-cultural, multi-layered city. Many languages, many cultures, many differences. I'm glad i got to watch this one just a few days after Alice. The world depicted here is the world that makes Alice possible. This informs the world of Alice. The depiction of immigration as, at the same time, one of the most natural phenomena in our global times and one of the most system exploited ones is the theme that conducts us through the lives of various immigrants, giving us the full portrait, the unmasking of vanities, feelings of progress and happy futures. Of course this is uneven. It has beautiful art shots, in simple great combination of music, routine sounds, off voice narration and real life shots. But it also has highly zoomed no cinematic quality scenes, useful but artless, or scenes filmed in an almost amateur way. Of course... But it holds a special place for what it shows and for the problems it depicts.

It's built with boards, episodes, character discontinuity, racial discontinuity, language discontinuity, color discontinuity, mood discontinuity. Such as big cities are today.

This is not artless, and Tréfaut knows what he does. Watch it, and keep Alice on your side, for higher cinematic affairs.

My evaluation: 4/5

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