Will-o’-the-Wisp (2022, João Pedro Rodrigues)

Prince Alfredo’s dying flashback to 2011 flits from a forest musical to a dinner scene where Al (now curly-haired Mauro Costa) gives a dinner-table speech to camera about how older generations are failing us. He decides to become a fireman, is shown around by Affonso (André Cabral). The firemen train to The Magic Flute, and entertain themselves with nude reenactments of famous artworks. While Al is looking at a penis slideshow he gets a call saying his dad has died of covid and he must return to the royal family, but he’ll always remember his time with Affonso, who I guess becomes president of Portugal. A much sillier movie than The Ornithologist.

Michael Sicinski on Patreon:

Will-o’the-Wisp is a critical inquiry into Portuguese history staged as intellectual gay porno, a Hottest Hunks of the Fire Brigade charity calendar that lights upon the legacy of colonialism, Western visual culture, and the ornamental irrelevance of Portugal’s faded aristocracy.

Charles Bramesco in Little White Lies:

Sex should be fun and just a tiny bit goofy, an intuitively understood real-life concept that nonetheless eludes filmmakers all over the globe.

funeral fashions of the future: