Following on the heels of The Eccentricities of a Blond-Haired Girl, Oliveira comes back with The Strange Case of Angelica, a similarly magical, lyrical and lovely tale of love and loss. It is very similar to Eccentricities in its style and format, it also feels like a film version of a short story (though not as short as the former), and also stars leading man Ricardo Trepa.
He plays Isaac, a Jewish man with no traditional roots in a small coastal town. One night he's asked to visit the house of the village's wealthiest family and photograph their recently deceased twenty-something daughter. The moment he sees her in her death bad, he falls in love with her. When he takes her picture, he imagines she's looking right at him and smiling. He becomes obsessed with her and can't concentrate on his work without thinking of her. All he wants to do is spend eternity with her, but, of course, she's dead and he's living, so there are some basic problems with that idea.
The film is lovely and poetic in an unusually dramatic and beautiful way. Oliveira seems to have made a film that feels more 1920s than 2010s. He uses almost only static shots, perfectly composed and amazingly full of interest in life. Some shots go on for 10 or more minutes, most have action pass in front of them and tension arises when we don't know what is coming in front of the lens next. He does occasionally tilt the camera or crane it up, but these shots are few and far between. It feels like an UFA picture from before the sound era. Add a bit of wonderful color and you have almost the same film.
Oliveira also uses music in a wonderful way, with most of the score as a solo pianist playing mournful and sentimental tunes. The sounds work wonderfully as Isaac sadly suffers without the love of Angelica. Oliveira also uses traditional workman songs to break up the tone a bit. They give a wonderful texture to what we see on screen.
This feels to me to be a chicken and hare situation. Oliveira is clearly well established (he made his first film in 1931) and it seems like he's not running, but slowly walking here. He knows how to make an excellent movie; he's seen all the tricks and knows them well. He doesn't do anything flashy (other than some silly ghosty double exposure stuff), but he does it right and does it well.
I am very interested in the idea that this and Eccentricities are supposed to be viewed together or in close succession. That film dealt with the capriciousness of love and the fickleness of lovers. This film deals with the eternality of love and the deep, strong attachments people have to it - even if totally constructed in their heads.
I also wonder if Isaac in this film is Oliveira himself. The character is a man obsessed by photographic images of his lover. In the winter of his life (easy for me to say... he could live another 20 years at this rate), the director could be a man looking back at the photographs he's taken, having fallen in love with them. I think it is clearly significant that the man is a photographer.
I like how it is the same actor in both films and that he plays a different, but not totally dissimilar, characters in each. In Eccentricities he was a man shackled to his family and the role he was supposed to play in the greater story of his genetic line. Here he is an outsider (a Jew) who is somewhat not tied down by the heavy burden of local expectations. He is a total free agent without any duty. I think together the two films show us two sides of the same coin. Love can be fast and thoughtless and hard to figure out, or it can be deep and unwavering and without borders.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
No comments:
Post a Comment