Actors on the set
Anton Yelchin, R.I.P.
PORTO B-
Portugal France Poland
USA (76 mi) 2016
d: Gabe Klinger Official
North American site
You never know if what
you’ve lost is better than what you’ve gained.
A memory piece,
using cinema as a means to explore what might be the most intensely personal
moments in our lives, yet just as quickly we move on from them, like a glorious
sunset, gone but not forgotten, unable to sustain the emotional immediacy of
that moment, where it gets lost in the fabric of what we eventually become,
perhaps even exaggerated or elevated into something more idyllic over time, yet
never leaving what amounts to that essential core of our interior lives. This is a movie that starts off beautifully,
offering lingering portraits of what could be any populated European city, in
this case the older regions of the city of Porto, Portugal, offering
impressionistic glimpses of time passing.
Perhaps embracing Manoel de Oliveira’s PORTO OF MY CHILDHOOD (2001), in
a brief 76 minutes this plays like a reverie, a fleeting memory, though the
press notes suggest it attempts to evoke a cinematic form of saudade (an untranslatable Portuguese
word that describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic
longing for an absent person or place that one has loved, carrying with it an
assurance that this feeling may never happen again), a common fixture in the
literature and music of Brazil, Portugal, and Cape Verde, perhaps most
recognizable through a unique style of singing, evoking extreme sadness, for
instance, Saudades do
Brasil em Portugal! (Amália Rodrigues) - YouTube (2:03) or Cartola - AS ROSAS NÃO FALAM
- Angenor de Oliveira - YouTube (2:54), though one of the most infamous
uses of this format may be seen in a Mexican Huapango song performed by
Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso in Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER, Caetano Veloso Cucurrucucu
Paloma (Hable Con Ella) - YouTube (3:44).
In much the same way Klinger’s earlier film, Double
Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater (2013) revealed the influence
that filmmakers James Benning and Richard Linklater had on him, this is another
work that is basically a love letter to the timelessness of the art of cinema,
paying tribute to the various kinds of cinematic aesthetic that have captured
this filmmaker’s imagination, using different film stocks, 35 mm, 16 mm, and
Super 8, and changing aspect ratios to convey different shades of memory. Whether it’s a success or not may vary upon a
viewer’s appreciation for film history, as Klinger has brought his own unique
qualities as a film critic, cinema professor, and curator into his own work
that is strikingly spare in content, sometimes feeling lightweight and overly
pretentious, particularly some of the dialogue, which at times feels cringeworthy, where two things stand out, the eloquently spare piano music from Ethiopian
nun, Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, The Homeless Wanderer -
YouTube (7:07), but also the soaring beauty captured by cinematographer
Wyatt Garfield, where the gorgeous golden hue of the lovemaking scenes in an
otherwise darkened room is inspired by the matchless beauty of the opening
scene in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers
of Shanghai (Hai shang hua) (1998), arguably among the most visually
entrancing opening shots in all of cinema, flowers of shanghai first
scene / shot - YouTube (8:35).
While the film
opens and closes on the same shot, it unravels in three chapters (Jake, Mati,
and both together), following two people, Jake, (Anton Yelchin, the
Russian-accented Chekov in Star Trek
who tragically died in a freak accident following the end of production), an
American drifter working abroad and Mati (Lucie Lucas), a French archaeologist,
on separate paths that intersect briefly for one cataclysmic night in a foreign
city, using the city of Porto to transport viewers into a different time
dimension, moving backwards, like Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible
(Irréversible) (2002), where the future, present, and past merge into
one. Featuring a brief outdoor exchange
before winding up at the same café, the film is a labrynthian journey infused
with jazzy piano interludes of Jake walking anonymously through crowds,
stopping briefly at the window of a diner, then continuing past corner bars, down
side streets with narrow passageways and stairways before returning to his
rented room, where the overall feeling is an existential tone of wandering
alone in foreign territory. What’s
immediately apparent is that he is revisiting some of these same spots that he
experienced earlier in his youth, now a disheveled and forlorn figure,
appearing haunted by what he sees, a ghostly shadow of what once existed. All expressed through vague, barely audible
dialogue, where the connecting pieces occur in a corner bar with the music of
John Lee Hooker playing, JOHN LEE HOOKER - Shake it Baby YouTube
(4:23), where she seems to be staring a hole right through him, literally
inviting him to introduce himself with a knowing smile, but this moment is
broken by sadder reflections of what was lost, as lone figures continue to walk
down solitary streets in the night. The
same moments reoccur again from slightly different perspectives, repeating the
same phrases, as thoughts repeat themselves, like a record stuck on the same
note, before moving on. These elliptical
passages are intertwined throughout, mixed into the threadbare script, appearing
to be haunting moments lived over again and again through what appears to be a
bleak and disconsolate life for Jake afterwards, still clinging to the past,
refusing to let her go, becoming something of a stalker in real life, where she
is forced to purge him out of her life with the help of the police, literally
thwarting his existence. Stitching
together these moments in time, we know it ends badly, all of which is
presented before they even meet, where we only get glimpses of their lives
beforehand. Easily the biggest
disappointment in the film is a choice the filmmaker makes to leave a scene
with Françoise Lebrun as Mati’s mother in a conversation with her daughter in
French unsubtitled, her only appearance in the entire film, a legendary actress
from Jean Eustache’s The
Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), a seminal work in film
history. This is the cruelest moment of
the film, and a maddening one, as this resembles the Godardian contempt for an
American audience displayed in Film
Socialisme (2010), where he didn’t even bother to provide translated
subtitles for the American theatrical release, suggesting instead they should
learn French. This haughty attitude
exhibits a sneering elitism that is simply inexcusable on any level.
While the film is a fallout from a sensually charged night
of bliss, first viewers are rather humorously treated to the morning after, as
Jake awakes alone, but sticks around, so he is still there much later, only to
be surprised when Mati returns home after work with the man in her current
relationship, her classics professor João (Paulo Calatré), who may or may not
become her husband, but he can be seen picking up their daughter later in life
after they have separated, where it obviously didn’t turn out the way they hoped.
João, however, couldn’t be more polite to Jake, taking unexpected
pleasure in his presence, like fresh meat to toy with, while Jake finds the man
vile and overbearing. This brief
encounter leads to a more abstractly projected future, using experimental
imagery that serves as what amounts to home movies, all succinctly expressed
like an afterthought. By the time the
couple actually meets, what happens is a foregone conclusion, yet after meeting
at the club, it starts by Mati asking Jake to carry a heavy box from her car to
her new apartment, leading to the most protracted shot of the film, slightly
amusing, as it becomes an endurance joke that is on him, while he politely
shrugs it off like it’s nothing. Her
apartment, with a giant window overlooking the Douro River that sneaks though
the city’s central neighborhoods, is essentially a mattress on the floor, only
the essentials, becoming an idyllic portrait of a sexual affair, losing
themselves in one another’s embrace, whispering sweet nothings, though it is
visualized from a specifically male point of view, with the camera only
interested in finding her body, becoming a bit ludicrous after a while, though
it is an idealized fantasy of hopeful expectations, compounded by Mati assuming
the Lena Olin role in Philip
Kaufman’s THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988), which becomes a fixated
image of the young filmmaker’s idea of sensuality. Shot on widescreen in the most luscious color
available through 35 mm, the pronounced density of the texture is alluring,
though the animated sexual moans and groans less so, as this might be too early
in the director’s career to explore such intimacy, as what it lacks is
maturity. Because they barely know each
other, it’s not so hard to understand the ramifications, building up the
rhapsodic delight to make way for the inevitable fall, like Icarus coming too
close to the sun, plunging headlong into a sea of indifference, much of it
precipitated by Jake’s youthful reactions, going overboard, losing himself in
this woman, unable to comprehend that she has a different life that does not
include him. His attachment becomes an
obsessive fixation, becoming psychologically unhinged, where his personal
choices only inflate the delusion, turning affection into something dangerous,
becoming overly burdensome, baggage that must be left behind. Of course, that doesn’t make Jake feel any
better, unable to separate his own feelings from hers, still thinking they
belong together. By moving backwards in
time, the finale avoids any emotional fallout, adding a more hopeful day after,
one with positive inclinations, where it ends still living the dream, oblivious
to all else.
where can I watch this movie online?
ReplyDeleteSorry. Have no idea. As I live in Chicago, probably more than 99% of the films reviewed on this site are seen in theaters. None are viewed online.
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