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Reviews
Alice (2005)
Yet another quintessential Portuguese movie...
Yep, here's comes another Portuguese Tsai Ming-Liang... Another guy that thinks it's pretty cool to make a whole movie out of two pages of dialogue; that believes that rainy days, blue-tinted cinematography, Satie-like piano and the constant droning of passing cars and passing trains are an original way of expressing the anguish of modern urban existence; that pointless boredom, however well filmed (as indeed it was) can ever be something different than pointless boredom. What is truly absent in this movie, besides poor little Alice, is a story, as ever that detail that is never allowed to get in the way of the Big Ideas, Big Characters and Big Images of our filmmakers (except João Canijo, that at least makes the effort of riping-off Shakespeare). All the artistry in the world cannot save such an empty, empty, object.
Coisa Ruim (2006)
Rotten to the core
Patriotism is a beautiful thing. But misguided patriotism led to Hitler. And the Portuguese folks that have written here either suffer from an exacerbated love for all things Portuguese, or they are friends of the director: because this film is rotten. Even considering Portuguese films low standards, it is rotten. And not due to the usual lack of means: the photography and sound are first rate, the actors are respected professionals and no effort has been spared on locations and costumes; even the direction is technically proficient (if in a mannerist way). But the end to all these means was a work that set itself the target of copying and pasting scenes, ideas, ambiances and whole phrases of other films ("the Shining", "the Others", "the Village", and even "the Usual Suspects" key phrase about the "devil's best trick"). In one hundred minutes there isn't one new idea: only pastiche. And, if, once in a while, great movies come out of this, here the pilfering serves no purpose. There is no point to the film, no reason for it to have been made, and no reason for it to be seen. If the movie tried to tell the story, it failed: there is no story, just a sum of anecdotal and disconnected events than serve as pretexts to insert the copied scenes; the dialogs abound, and pedantically drag on and on; the characters are stereotypes than change their demeanor for no apparent reason, disappearing inexplicably from scene only to reappear latter, at the plot's convenience, like in a high-school play (in-between dialogues, none of them actually seem to have anything to do). If the movie strives to create and ambiance, it fails: besides the landscapes none of the rural scenes bears any semblance to reality: the village has two streets and two priest, no cars and no TV's; yet all villagers speak with high-street Lisbon accents, and servants and masters, priest and their flock, priest among themselves: all speak with a familiarity completely unbecoming to what rural traditions demand; the screenwriter just mistook a weekend outing in his uncle's farm with serious Stephen King type research. If the film tried to cause scares, it failed completely: every scene too rehashed and every character too unconvincing to care about. The only source of anxiety was realising how low Portuguese film has stooped so that this utterly mediocre crap passes for progress. In Portuguese, "Coisa Ruim" means "Foul Thing". That, believe me, it is.