Director:
Manoel de Oliveira
Starring:
Leonor Silveira
Filipa de Almeida
John Malkovich
Catherine Deneuve
Stefania Sandrelli
Irene Papas
Release: N/A
IMDb
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A Talking Picture
BY: DAVID PERRY
Many, myself included, thought the release of I’m Going Home
to be an intentional swansong for the then 93-year-old Manoel de Oliviera.
The film’s resolution, with a man retiring after a long career in show
business, welcoming death, felt slightly autobiographical. But two years
later, de Oliviera is still at it. His latest, A Talking Picture, has all
the agility of man half his age.
The title is particularly brilliant considering that de Oliviera is one of
the last working directors who got his start in silent films. It’s also
representative of the film, which is like Russian Ark in reverse, with
people talking about the role of early civilizations in the East -- Greece,
India, etc. -- in the development of a dominant West. Set around a cruise in
which a history professor tells her daughter of all the contributions the
East has brought to places like Marseilles, the film foregoes a narrative
story for pedantic exercises. There’s much to be said in this doctoral
thesis, and de Oliviera succeeds in making it interesting in this cinematic
form.
There is a small story that occurs on the cruise ship as the captain (Malkovich
seemingly playing himself) converses with the celebrities who’ve come onto
the cruise. They all speak their native tongue -- English, French, Greek,
Portuguese -- without any problems understanding each other. They’re the
offspring of all these Eastern traditions, amalgamated into a Western ethos
that wines and dines, failing to note the regression simultaneously going on
in their native East. With a surprise bang, de Oliviera reminds them.
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