{"id":11727,"date":"2017-01-27T20:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T02:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=11727"},"modified":"2017-01-24T12:07:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T18:07:46","slug":"last-time-i-saw-macao-2012-joao-pedro-rodrigues-joao-rui-guerra-da-mata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/11727","title":{"rendered":"Last Time I Saw Macao (2012, Jo\u00e3o Pedro Rodrigues & Jo\u00e3o Rui Guerra da Mata)"},"content":{"rendered":"

First-person movie with barely-seen narrator\/protagonist. It’s kind of an essay film about revisiting the city where he grew up after being gone thirty years, noting the changes. But it’s also an interesting new thing – a noirish murder\/mystery played out mostly in audio, with the visuals in the same style as the essay-documentary sections, almost as if the footage was shot and then the filmmakers belatedly decided to make a completely different kind of movie.<\/p>\n

Guerra da Mata:<\/p>\n

We do have several references, like from Josef von Sternberg’s film Macao<\/em> … One of the first shots of our film is a travelling shot by boat, like in the beginning of the Sternberg film. We liked the idea of having documentary images introducing a plot that was actually shot in a Hollywood studio.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rodrigues: “And we decided to do the opposite: inventing a plot mostly shot with documentary images.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A couple of lipsync musical performances (one in the opening, presumably performed by noir-figure Candy, another in the middle by a canal boater) help tie the threads together. Unexpectedly, the noir story ends up involving a bird cage containing a Kiss Me Deadly<\/a><\/em>-style glowing secret (it turns people into animals). So I followed the movie with pleasure, though after the fact I think I admire it more than love it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Things I didn’t get because I don’t know my film history: Candy was performing Jane Russell’s song from the movie Macao<\/em> in the introduction. This gets discussed in the film itself for us clueless types, as does some Macao history – it was occupied by the Portuguese for centuries then handed over to China in 1999.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Second appearance of Astro Boy today, after spotting him in Yi Yi<\/a><\/em>. First movie I’ve seen by either of these Jo\u00e3os, who also made To Die Like a Man<\/em> and The Ornithologist<\/em> together.<\/p>\n

Great interview in Cinema Scope. They got funding for a Macao documentary then decided to make something else based on Guerra da Mata’s memories of living there, but they still only had the budget of a documentary.<\/p>\n

Rodrigues:
\n“We wanted our film to be playful, and I think that this is a really wide range: Chris Marker, James Bond, film noir … sci-fi.”<\/p>\n

–
\nAlvorada Vermelha \/ Red Dawn<\/em> (2011)<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think the directors mentioned that making this short led to Macao<\/em>, so I had the bright idea of watching them together. No spoken words, opens with a shot of a high-heeled shoe on the road, which could easily be from the other film (which also opens with a shoe close-up), and both movies share a glimpsed mermaid character… but for the most part, this is a documentary set inside a slaughterhouse where lots of fishes and chickens are killed and cut up, thus it’s kinda no fun to watch.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First-person movie with barely-seen narrator\/protagonist. It’s kind of an essay film about revisiting the city where he grew up after being gone thirty years, noting the changes. But it’s also an interesting new thing – a noirish murder\/mystery played out mostly in audio, with the visuals in the same style as the essay-documentary sections, almost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,477,200,258,750,1811,2207,902,370],"class_list":["post-11727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-animal-slaughter","tag-china","tag-essay","tag-fake-documentary","tag-joao-pedro-rodrigues","tag-joao-rui-guerra-da-mata","tag-macau","tag-portugal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11822,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11727\/revisions\/11822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}