Veteran director Manoel de Oliveira marked his 100th birthday with the adaptation of José Maria de Eça de Queiroz’s short story. It is a fascinating tale set in 18th century Portugal about a young accountant named Macário who, while peering through his office window above his uncle’s cashmere store, instantly falls in love with Luisa who lives in the building next door. He rushes to pursue her only to have his uncle prohibit the relationship and making his employment conditional upon this command. But of course, love must have its way and Macário travels to Cape Verde where he could raise funds to ask for Luisa’s hand. It is unquestionably a romantic premise although with an interesting twist that proves Macário’s efforts to have been in vain.

Oliveira’s style is certainly different from what we would normally see today. Perhaps it’s his age or perhaps it’s to reflect the time period, but the film was captured in a very old fashioned way. I’m not an expert so I don’t know the correct technical terms, but it was shot such that the quality of the picture seemed like it was something that was made in the distant past with many moments of static. More than that, Oliveira relies on the bare minimum, using as little settings and props as possible.

The story itself is one that has incredible potential and I can definitely see why it was a success in its literary form. It’s potential, however, was not translated onto the screen. Running at an hour long, there were many scenes that the film could have done without. It seemed only to prolong the story leaving the audience exasperated as we waited for some action to occur. Like I said earlier, the film is based on a short story and it should have been exactly that…a short story. Oliveira could have shot the film in about thirty minutes and still capture not only the essence of the story, but also the interest of his audience.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Arts, Film, Review, TIFF 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.