A Viagem de Pedro

I saw this film by pure chance at a small film festival about the sea, in my small town in Portugal - Ílhavo. When the film ended, I remember thinking how impossible it would have been for Hollywood cinema to tell this story in this claustrophobic, almost sickening way. How do you narrate someone's long journey on a ship and across the Atlantic without ever, not even for a second, having the opportunity to see the English vessel that transported Dom Pedro from Brazil to Portugal? The film is built on the growing tension between the characters and an almost macabre vision of these relationships. The emperor's psychotic existence dominates the story told and the climate generated by this labyrinth of tensions, fears and doubts only accentuates it.