by ·Comments Off on Trails / Barefoot (João César Monteiro)

Trails aka Paths (1978)

Some kind of montage of folk tales, fables, poetry, with some gratuitous nudity.

White-haired guy is a relentless storyteller. A good section where a guy is running side-quests for a sheep thief, followed by too many scenes where admittedly cool-looking people stand still and recite lines. One guy gets imprisoned by gunmen for setting their slave-labor free. I got very tired and spaced out, but we reached present day somehow. The main(?) characters are a young couple in love, of course, or maybe multiple couples, since at one point she’s stabbed and thrown into the sea, and later she and her baby get killed by werewolves. Whatever’s going on here, Monteiro sure knows how to frame a shot.

–
He Goes Long Barefoot That Waits For Dead Men’s Shoes (1965)

Early short containing some of his later preoccupations (doomed couples, mirrors, Luis Miguel Cintra).

by ·Comments Off on À Flor do Mar (1986, João César Monteiro)

“Life is made of mistakes.” A family has a big few days harboring a fugitive. I think people are calling it Ruizian because of the pirates, but it’s truly very euro-arthouse, and I dig it. Rivettian in a few ways: long takes, long movie, creaky furniture and a cat following its own direction. I knew nothing about Monteiro a couple months ago, and now I’ve seen Silvestre and all his movies have been newly-restored on blu-ray, and why not watch them all?

Laura (the prolific Laura Morante of The Son’s Room and Coeurs) had moved her kids to Italy after her husband died suddenly last summer, is back on the Portuguese coast to visit her sisters-in-law (older Oliveira regular Manuela de Freitas, younger Teresa Villaverde, better known as a director) when an American washes up on the beach, so she takes him home to hide out. He successfully lays low during searches from police and pirates, then leaves them alone. “We’ll have to learn how to use up the remaining unhappiness.”

I don’t know whether the guy was named after Conan the Barbarian writer Robert Jordan on purpose, or if Laura’s last name being Rossellini is meaningful, but Sara recites from Doomed Love (she appeared in the film eight years earlier), and their cat is named Silvestre.

The lead actors staring at Monteiro:

by ·Comments Off on Silvestre (1982, Joao Cesar Monteiro)

Supremely cool movie, the artificial look gave me flashbacks to Perceval Le Gallois. I guess I like Monteiro now, and there’s plenty more to see.

Without Affinity I don’t know how to remove weird watermarks:

Maria de Medeiros looked exactly the same age 22 years later in The Saddest Music in the World, doesn’t transform from a damsel into the warrior Silvestre until the last 40 minutes. Her sister was in Francisca the same year, went on to star in Tabu. Luis Miguel Cintra is the villain here, and Paio also played second fiddle to Cintra in Ilha dos Amores and Satin Slipper.