Vai~E~Vem

Light, peaceful, wickedly erudite humour of a kind long since unheard of. A Portuguese film from a Portuguese film maker. A film about "everydayness" and availability to be aroused by others and by their words. An experience of declined immortality for the sake of life.

I saw this movie one year and half ago... When I saw, i give 1 star, and now, after all this time, I gave another's 4 stars.. Its a movie like the book Little Prince, you have to grow to understand, and get the knowledge to realize what its the main problem there, and after that, you will see the pain behind the movie... Its a movie to see every 3 years, and every time you will change your perspective about this magnificent piece of art. Its a slow movie, but once you get the reason and love from the characters, the slow begin to feel faster that you want your life to be. It was the mirror of many old people that feel left from their family, and after all they give for us, we felt them. I love the movie, and most the message.

I had to see this film because my Film History 2 professor made us watch it. My professor told us that he had just come across Joao and he loved this film and he loves all of the films he has seen by him. I have no idea why though. In my opinion this was three hours of nonsense. I sat there confused the entire time. The only thing I understood about the plot was the part about his son and even that has it's holes. I also think he is kind of a copy cat because I saw many of the same sexual things that Godard did in his films. In fact, by the end of this film I felt like I had just finished watching a Godard film. I came out of class feeling confused and disgusted. I do not recommend this film to anyone unless they love Extremely slow moving films, subtitles, and a completely confusing plot. The other reason I found this film hard to watch was because it was in Portuguese and I speak some Castillion Spanish so that combined with the English subtitles drove me nuts. I think most people won't find this a problem, but I did. Again I do not recommend this to anyone. I thought the independent film "The Item" was the worst movie I had ever seen, but then I saw this one. I hope this saves a lot of people from the same torture I had to endure.

Great were my expectations when I went to watch this film, because the Portuguese film critics were writing wonderful things about it. And how disappointed did I get! Sixty six shots in three hours and and nothing new. The film is nothing but an old man's fantasizing with young servants.

Monteiro has always had a very special approach to filmmaking, and he has his place in Portuguese film history, but that doesn't make this movie any better. What a pity.

This movie is a complete waste of time. The whole thing consists of endless static shots of the writer/director/star, Monteiro, spouting witty sounding or profound sounding gibberish.

Every now and then Monteiro minces around, quasi-adorably, like a wizened little Portuguese Nosferatu.

To sustain audience interest and to presumably show what exquisite taste he has, Monteiro places a young nubile Latina hottie in the shot, and allows her to listen in rapt attention while he spouts off endlessly. All I can say is, I certainly hope she was paid well for what must surely have been the sheerest torture.

The only redeeming qualities to this film were a couple nice musical numbers on the soundtrack and the beautiful outside location shots of Lisbon.

I've seen one other of Monteiro's movies, "God's Comedy", and that had similar problems, but not as bad as "Vai E Vem".

Much is made of the fact that this was Monteiro's last film before he died in 2003. It seems pretty clear from the hugely self absorbed and self indulgent character of this film that it constitutes more of a curse than a blessing on the world he was leaving behind.