The only active director whose career intersects the silent film era, 90-year-old Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira continues to astonish for the relevancy and daring his art represents. This amazing filmmaker, who has made a film a year for the last decade, fashions one of his most sublime achievements with "The Letter" -- a beautiful, sorrowful contemporary translation of Mme de la Fayette's 17th century novel, "Madame de Cleves" -- which was awarded a special jury prize at Cannes.
Deftly transposing the material to the present, Oliveira infuses the work with a visual poetry and musical elegance that, taken with its wit and style, makes this one of the director's most accessible films. In addition to the formal innovations, in particular the use of off-screen narration, Oliveira turns the work into a sharp emotional inquiry, a study into the nature of truth and attraction, longing and heartbreak. Oliveira finds new ways to invent himself, opening the film in a way that appears the work of a much different director. A shot of a backstage dressing room leads to a stage, where a handsome, charismatic performer named Pedro Abrunhosa (played, inventively enough, by the Portuguese star of the same name) is performing a concert.
Deploying the first of his wry intertitles, Oliveira shifts the action to the interiors of an fashionably upscale diamond store where Mme de Chartres (Francoise Fabian) is buying an expensive necklace for her daughter, a "noblewoman" (Chiara Mastroianni). The women come under the watchful gaze of a wealthy man, Monsieur de Cleves (Antoine Chappey) -- clearly infatuated with the gilded, beautiful young woman. In his masterpieces such as "Francisca" or "Valley of Abraham", Oliveira utilized with subtlety and grace a narrator whose voice was a brilliant formal idea, unleashing digressions, character nuance and the power of observation to both comment on and provide analysis of the frequently complicated narrative.
Shifting around with time and space, Oliveira uses text superimposed over a blank screen to compress and underline the key narrative developments, the marriage of the aristocrat Cleves to the beautiful young woman. Just as important, Oliveira knits together the two narrative threads contrasting the fates of Mme. Cleves, who doesn't love her husband, and the man she is desperately attracted to, the magnetic Pedro. Following the death of her mother (who realized her daughter's furtive attraction to Pedro and warned her against consummating it), Mme Cleves now confides to her childhood friend, a nun (Oliveira regular Leonor Silveira). As the film moves toward the seemingly inevitable, the acknowledgment of Pedro and Mme. Cleves' mutual attraction, Oliveira beautifully upsets the natural order.
What transforms "The Letter" into a vivid, essential viewing experience is not just the beautifully constructed emotional interplay, the inventive narration, the depth of feeling for his characters, but the way every time, for instance, Oliveira resumes the action following the narration, he finds an image (a brooding, devastating shot inside the cemetery, Mme. Cleves stationed behind an iron fence) that yields a particularly resonant character or emotional detail, a fresh and exciting perspective. Oliveira constantly undermines narrative expectations without compromising the depth of emotion, the hard feelings, the unbearable pain of unrequited love
"The Letter" showcases the vitality of a particular brand of European art movie, complex, rueful and finally, one that is deeply moving. The scenes between Mastroianni and Lenoir are both perfectly underplayed and powerfully etched, demonstrating how great acting and auteurism aren't incompatible. Filmmaking this good is rare, and proper attention must be paid.
THE LETTER
A French/Spanish/Portuguese coproduction
Gemini Films, Wanda Films and Madragoa Filmes
Credits: Producer: Paulo Branco; Director/writer: Manoel de Oliveira; Based on the novel by: Mme. de la Fayette; Cinematographer: Emmanuel Machuel; Editor: Valerie Loiseleux; Sound: Jean Paul Mugel; Production design: Ana Vaz Da Silva; Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury; Cast: Mme. de Cleves: Chiara Mastroianni; Pedro: Pedro Abrunhosa; Mme. de Cleves: Antoine Chappey; the nun: Leonor Silveira; Mme. de Chartres: Francoise Fabian...
Deftly transposing the material to the present, Oliveira infuses the work with a visual poetry and musical elegance that, taken with its wit and style, makes this one of the director's most accessible films. In addition to the formal innovations, in particular the use of off-screen narration, Oliveira turns the work into a sharp emotional inquiry, a study into the nature of truth and attraction, longing and heartbreak. Oliveira finds new ways to invent himself, opening the film in a way that appears the work of a much different director. A shot of a backstage dressing room leads to a stage, where a handsome, charismatic performer named Pedro Abrunhosa (played, inventively enough, by the Portuguese star of the same name) is performing a concert.
Deploying the first of his wry intertitles, Oliveira shifts the action to the interiors of an fashionably upscale diamond store where Mme de Chartres (Francoise Fabian) is buying an expensive necklace for her daughter, a "noblewoman" (Chiara Mastroianni). The women come under the watchful gaze of a wealthy man, Monsieur de Cleves (Antoine Chappey) -- clearly infatuated with the gilded, beautiful young woman. In his masterpieces such as "Francisca" or "Valley of Abraham", Oliveira utilized with subtlety and grace a narrator whose voice was a brilliant formal idea, unleashing digressions, character nuance and the power of observation to both comment on and provide analysis of the frequently complicated narrative.
Shifting around with time and space, Oliveira uses text superimposed over a blank screen to compress and underline the key narrative developments, the marriage of the aristocrat Cleves to the beautiful young woman. Just as important, Oliveira knits together the two narrative threads contrasting the fates of Mme. Cleves, who doesn't love her husband, and the man she is desperately attracted to, the magnetic Pedro. Following the death of her mother (who realized her daughter's furtive attraction to Pedro and warned her against consummating it), Mme Cleves now confides to her childhood friend, a nun (Oliveira regular Leonor Silveira). As the film moves toward the seemingly inevitable, the acknowledgment of Pedro and Mme. Cleves' mutual attraction, Oliveira beautifully upsets the natural order.
What transforms "The Letter" into a vivid, essential viewing experience is not just the beautifully constructed emotional interplay, the inventive narration, the depth of feeling for his characters, but the way every time, for instance, Oliveira resumes the action following the narration, he finds an image (a brooding, devastating shot inside the cemetery, Mme. Cleves stationed behind an iron fence) that yields a particularly resonant character or emotional detail, a fresh and exciting perspective. Oliveira constantly undermines narrative expectations without compromising the depth of emotion, the hard feelings, the unbearable pain of unrequited love
"The Letter" showcases the vitality of a particular brand of European art movie, complex, rueful and finally, one that is deeply moving. The scenes between Mastroianni and Lenoir are both perfectly underplayed and powerfully etched, demonstrating how great acting and auteurism aren't incompatible. Filmmaking this good is rare, and proper attention must be paid.
THE LETTER
A French/Spanish/Portuguese coproduction
Gemini Films, Wanda Films and Madragoa Filmes
Credits: Producer: Paulo Branco; Director/writer: Manoel de Oliveira; Based on the novel by: Mme. de la Fayette; Cinematographer: Emmanuel Machuel; Editor: Valerie Loiseleux; Sound: Jean Paul Mugel; Production design: Ana Vaz Da Silva; Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury; Cast: Mme. de Cleves: Chiara Mastroianni; Pedro: Pedro Abrunhosa; Mme. de Cleves: Antoine Chappey; the nun: Leonor Silveira; Mme. de Chartres: Francoise Fabian...
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