Portugal
This dispatch features two great films involving passionate love affairs — but, apart from that, they could not be more radically different.
While not the most groundbreaking or inspiring film, it’s still a masterful piece of early Truffaut filmmaking and storytelling and a revered classic.
MUBI is currently hosting a mini-retrospective highlighting four of her features, including A Woman’s Revenge (2012) and The Portuguese Woman (2018).
Vitalina Varela is a visually stunning film submerged in regret, remorse, anger, and in some ways a faint light of hope.
Ira Sachs’ Frankie has Isabelle Huppert in the titular role confronting her own mortality through a cancer diagnosis and on a ticking clock.
Color Out of Space heralds Richard Stanley’s return, a man given short shrift and who has a great eye for throwback horror and truly creepy cinema.
Diamantino is too insufferably quirky to offer any meaningful statement on the socio-political issues it references.
After failing to get the film out of production hell for so many years, it’s no surprise The Man Who Killed Don Quixote feels world weary and cynical.
The Forest of the Lost Souls is an impressive debut that will find its audience in those filmgoers who appreciate cinematic genre fusion.
While lovely looking and with great performances, Porto ‘s characters are so underwritten it is hard to connect with them or understand them.