At 101 Manoel de Oliveira, the world’s oldest filmmaker, mixes up antique formality and the high visual style of the pre-sound era to rich and strange effect in a surreal tale of perverse love.
The meaning of the story is the pleasure of the tale... its narrative advanced with the expertise of a chess master pushing his pawns.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2010
The Strange Case of Angelica 2010
O estranho caso de Angélica
Cinema’s centenarian mixes up antique formality and the high visual style of the pre-sound era to rich and strange effect in a surreal tale of perverse love (which he began working on in the 1950s).
“The Strange Case of Angelica is a gift from a filmmaker who, at 101 years old, is nearly as old as cinema itself. Ricardo Trêpa stars as Isaac, a photographer and young romantic who one rainy night is summoned to an estate to immortalize a beautiful bride who has suddenly, enigmatically, died. While taking the woman’s picture, something happens – magical, mystical, miraculous – that sends Isaac soaring into the heavens and into deepest despair: he falls in love with the dead woman. Using a Chopin sonata that might have accompanied a silent film, as well as modest special effects, Mr Oliveira at once looks back to the past, even as his characters meditate on the current economic crisis. I can’t wait to see it again.” — Manohla Dargis, NY Times