Mal Viver

This Portuguese film (Bad Living) is the first part of a diptych of two films, both made by director Joao Canijo and released in 2023. "Bad Living" won the Silver Bear for the 2nd best film in competition at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. The second film has the mirror title (Living Bad) and was also shown at the same edition of the festival in the parallel Encounters section. Joao Canijo's direction, scriptwriting, and conceptualization of the diptych makes one sit up. Both films have the same actors, with their screen-time inverted. "Bad Living" details an all women cast, of a family spread over three live generations, owning a hotel and their complex relationships. "Living Bad" is about the mirror world of a group of guests arriving at the hotel, with the same hotel owners dealing with their problems in the periphery. More interestingly, "Bad Living" is loosely based on the director's childhood (ref. IMDB trivia). "Living Bad" relates to the guests' interactions with the hotel owners and their traumas. Most interestingly, director Canijo structures the films on the lines of the works of writer-theosophist August Strindberg--whose works were influenced by his own life that switched from anti-Semitism to free thinking to atheism and, finally, back to religion. While I write this, I have yet to view the second part of the diptych. I will take keen interest henceforth in director/screenplaywriter Canijo's works. Finally, the ensemble cast of "Bad Living" impressed me.