A Janela (Maryalva Mix)

A Janela (Maryalva Mix) (2001)

12 Oct 2001 • Comedy • 1h 44m
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A piece of surreal art! Watching this film is like to look for a surreal painting for almost 2 hours. The cinematography is completely unique, out of any canon. At least I never saw anything like this, whether in Portuguese or foreign cinema! It's really unique and original as a piece of art must be! So, this movie is really bizarre but also has a lot of irony and sarcastic humor, with plenty and explicit sexual references. But what is even more interesting is that it assumes all its absurdity and even its dementia... One character of the movie says one thing that I don't know if it's true or not, but here it really makes sense: "Portugal is a country which has one of the most elevated rates of schizophrenic people"! Here, it completely makes sense, because this movie is entirely schizophrenic! Another interesting feature of this film is to mix this weird and unusual "avant-gard" cinematography with some traditional icons of the Portuguese culture, like Fado or the typical neighbourhoods of Lisbon ("Bica" is a typical neighbourhood which is used as setting to the plot). It makes me remind a Portuguese musician, already deceased, called António Variações, which in the early 80's mixed the innovative and modern elements of electronic music with traditional Portuguese music, creating something different from the rest. I think this quote belongs to him: "My music is somewhere between Minho (a region in the North of Portugal) and New York"! This movie resembles to it I think.In spite of all this weirdness this movie has a plot. A strange and different one but it has. It's all about ANTÓNIO. "Who is António?" In the beginning he can be anyone, but later we see he assumes different faces and personalities but he's just one. He has many women. He can satisfy 6 women at the same time...The acting is also strange but exists as well. And it's great, especially from Lúcia Sigalho who does different characters but gives a touch of humor in all of them. Manuel João Vieira ("the King", as someone said) also does a good job in his own particular way. Funny, as always! The other actors work like they were in a silent movie...To sum up, three words describe this movie: Experimental, abstract and weird. One word describes my opinion about it: Excellent!

Edgar Pêra
Director
Edgar Pêra, Lúcia Sigalho, Manuel João Vieira
Writer
Lúcia Sigalho, Manuel João Vieira, Nuno Melo
Starring

Language: Portuguese
Awards: 1 win & 3 nominations
Country: Portugal
Metacritic Score:
DVD Release Date:
Box Office Total:

6.9

IMDb (150 votes)
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