Film: The Portuguese Nun
Release date: 21st January 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 127 mins
Director: Eugène Green
Starring: Leonor Baldaque, Francisco Mozos, Diogo Dória, Ana Moreira, Eugène Green
Genre: Drama
Studio: ICA
Format: Cinema
Country: Portugal/France
The Portuguese Nun pursues the emotional journey of Julie de Hauranne, a French actress shooting a Portuguese film in Lisbon. Beginning as a character with unsteady feet, Julie is the subject of a progressive epiphany as she realises that she has the capacity to embrace life. Despite having three previous feature films, this is director Eugene Green’s first to be distributed in the UK – and he does not disappoint. Instead, he smothers viewers with his peculiar approach to cinema, playing with unconventionality and casting actors who have a blinding capacity to project emotion through their facial expression. It is with such experimentation that the film basks in an unconcealed pretention, allowing itself to exhibit a sardonic atmosphere rather than a solemn one.
The Portuguese Nun follows Julie around a picturesque Lisbon setting as she frivolously befriends anyone she meets, unfalteringly jumping into romantic exchanges and an assortment of acquaintances. We meet a 6-year-old orphan named Vasco, a suicidal local, the supposed reincarnation of dead Portuguese king Dom Sebastião, a co-star in search of a brief love affair, and a moustached disco-dancing film director. Julie is French, but her Portuguese mother has given her the gift of language necessary for fully experiencing her brief encounter with the country’s capital.
Julie is filming a bizarre movie based on a 17th century text about a Portuguese nun who falls in love with a French sailor, starring just two actors – Julie as the nun, and Martin as the sailor. The slack filming schedule facilitates her various meetings, starting with a momentary romance between Julie and Henrique. It is intentionally stiff and deliberate; their kiss is choreographed by procedure rather than passion. Julie soon becomes intrigued by a real local nun who appears to be forever knelt in front of the altar, and, in a bold directorial move, Julie and the nun spend almost fifteen minutes discussing spiritual versus secular love, religious philosophy and the presence of God.
The film within a film becomes almost a mirror image of the narrative: Eugene Green embellishes his talents at writing and directing by also playing the part of the film’s director Dennis Verde; Julie’s role as a nun is paralleled by the presence of the authentic nun; Julie and Martin’s on-screen love scene is later re-enacted in her hotel bedroom. And then suddenly Julie is surpassing this fabricated bubble of fiction as she undergoes a long-awaited revelation, narrated over a view of calm, open sea: “my passion increases with each moment…”
The Portuguese Nun opens before the soundtrack is introduced, painting an untainted image of Lisbon’s architectural personality before romanticising the view with the sound of mournful fado guitars. The same track is later allowed within the walls of the film’s narrative in a full-length performance of ‘Esquina de Rua’ by Camané. Julie watches, mesmerised by its haunting melancholy, while the camera plays upon the intensity of emotion projected between the music and the characters. It lingers on a section of grey wall, there are leaves dancing in a circle of wind in the background - it is an early indication of the director’s abstract style.
The film is constantly silhouetted by its dedication to the awareness of acting. Dialogue is intentionally rigid and movements are conscious - everybody knows that this is a staged work of fiction. And so Green’s creative choices are in fact brilliant, displaying his refreshingly eccentric skill of highlighting everything which would normally remain hidden in conventional filmmaking. Green liberates the principles of cinematography with his idiosyncratic techniques: focusing on characters’ feet rather than their heads; using as much silence between characters as there is speech; allowing the shot to linger on the backdrop, even after all the actors have left the scene; and shooting conversations with the actors speaking directly into the camera, surpassing the boundaries of the screen and reaching into our own world.
Leonor Baldaque is adequately likeable as Julie, but the director’s obviously stylised approach eventually mutates her great performance into something tiresome and simulated. Baldaque’s sparse dialogue is compensated for by her unflinching and vast eyes, which somehow have a consistent ability to communicate everything which the director requires. But while being forced into an unnerving face-to-face intimacy with every character is initially fascinating, its novelty eventually wears off due to its frequent rather than poignant use.
In a comical attempt at reading the minds of many cynical viewers, the opening scene features the hotel concierge declaring:“I never see French films, they’re for intellectuals.” Perhaps Eugene Green is encouraging the world to give abstract French cinema a second chance. Or perhaps he is simply paving the way for the rest of his mocking script. Green himself is subtly hilarious as he plays the part of Denis Verde, laboriously articulating his vocabulary in an attempt to maintain the non-acting which makes the film so intriguingly artificial.
The Portuguese Nun spends over two hours detailing Julie’s short journey of spiritual and social progression, using understated dramatics to belittle the elite world of French cinema whilst still endorsing the idea of obscurity. What it lacks in plot development, it makes up for in quirkiness. Green allows his film to laugh at itself without smiling - there is some humour concealed within his serious French walls. Sadly the static nature of the film hinders it from having an enormous psychological impact, but its visual quality remains a romantic ode to Lisbon. NM
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