Isaac, a photographer, is hired to create a posthumous portrait of young Angelica. But something happens to turn the lad’s life upside down. The new film by centenarian director Manoel de Oliveira was premiered at the Cannes IFF, where it opened the section Un certain regard.
In the middle of the night, Isaac, a photographer, receives an urgent call to come and take one last photograph of young Angelica, who died just a few days after her wedding. The lad is immediately overwhelmed by the girl’s beauty. What he glimpses next changes everything he has ever known about his existence. Will Isaac succumb to tantalising delusion or will he be able to extricate himself from romantic enchantment? In his new work, veteran Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira returns to the region of the Douro river where he also filmed his debut documentary almost eighty years ago. This deftly composed film is impressive not only for its classic tale of unscrupulous love, but also for its specific style, always directing the viewer’s attention towards a single action or theme. Although the story is set in the present, it has a dusting of old-world patina which lends it a more universal tone and mysterious atmosphere. "Love is abstract and it’s absolute”, states the director.
95 min / Color, 35 mm
Director Manoel de Oliveira
/ Screenplay Manoel de Oliveira
/ Dir. of Photography Sabine Lancelin
/ Editor Valérie Loiseleux
/ Producer François d’Artemare, Maria João Mayer, Luis Miñarro, Renata de Almeida & Leon Cakoff
/ Production Filmes do Tejo II, Eddie Saeta S.A., Les Films de l’Après-Midi, Mostra Internacional de Cinema
/ Cast Ricardo Trêpa, Pilar Lopez de Ayala, Leonor Silveira, Luís Miguel Cintra, Ana Maria Magalhães, Isabel Ruth
/ Contact Pyramide International
Manoel de Oliveira (b. 1908, Porto, Portugal) is the oldest active filmmaker in the history of cinema. He began his career in the 1930s with the silent documentary film Douro, faina fluvial (1931). His feature debut, Aniki Bóbó (1942), was a financial washout and, over the next few years, de Oliveira took up other professions. He later returned to film and worked with Marcello Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli, among others. His films have competed at the festivals in Cannes, Venice and Locarno and, since 1990, he has been directing at least one film every year. Abraham Valley (Vale Abraão,1993), inspired by the novel Madame Bovary, the tribute to Buñuel’s Belle de jour (1967) entitled Belle toujours (2006), and Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl (Singularidades de uma rapariga loura, 2009) were also screened in Karlovy Vary.
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Lluís Miñarro
Film Director / Producer
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