Miguel Gomes

6.0 The Face You Deserve (2004)
6.0 Our Beloved Month of August (2008)
7.3 Tabu (2012)
7.7 Arabian Nights (2015)
6.8 The Tsugua Diaries (2021)
7.4 Grand Tour (2024)

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Miguel Gomes (Portugal, 1972), originally a film critic, debuted as a director with A Cara que Mereces/ The Face You Deserve (2004), a postmodernist take on the comedy and the musical genres, which began his partnership with cinematographer Rui Pocas. The film begins with a performance of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" and then turns into an absurdist comedy of seven caregivers of an invisible patient who represent the psychological seven dwarves of the protagonist. They play a convoluted game of rituals that becomes a sort of natural selection after which only one "face" survives. At the beginning we see this: "At 30 years of age, you get the face God has given you. After that, you get the face you deserve." A sheriff gets out of the bus. He's a music teacher who has to perform in a costume performance of "Snow White". Francisco chats with teacher Marta, whose fairy costume has butterfly wings and who replies to his grumbling by singing, and with Vera. It's also his 30th birthday. During the "Snow White" performance by the children, he faints. Marta gives him a birthday present: a lifesize rubber crocodile. Next we see him in Vera's car, kissing her at a red traffic light. It is also carnival and there are masked kids in the streets. Next we see him at the doctor's office, but the doctor can't find anything wrong with him. He asks Marta to cancel the birthday dinner because he doesn't feel well. Then he theratens a 13-year-old kid who has a crush on Marta. Then he has to fight with a dog that has grabbed the rubber crocodile. Francisco gets home, which is decorated for a birthday party. He raps and sings about being 30. Then he spends the evening at a bingo bar drinking, smoking, listening to live music and playing bingo. Each person has a number stapled to the back and someone has scribbled "faggot" on his number. The bartender refuses to serve him another drink because they are closing. In the morning he feels horrible. He takes a night bus to the countryside. He enters an empty house and climbs the stairs to the top room which has a chest of toys. He starts sneezing, coughing and hiccupping. A rash appears on his face.
We hear his voice reading a list of 100 forbidden words (the first being "Francisco") and a long list of rules to take care of him, while we see seven grown men (the caregivers?) playing hide and seek inside a house like children, each one introduced by a comic book illustration: Nicolau, Copi, Gross, Talvassos, Harry, Texas, and Simões. These seven allegorical "dwarves" perform silly actions, have silly conversations, and go on silly errands in the woods, apparently faraway from civilization. Harry starts telling Copi a story about how Gross and Nicolau found a pirate treasure, but then changes story and Copi complains that he can’t start another story until he finishes the first. One rule is that they must go to sleep before midnight. When they fail, Travassos, Texas and Nicolau are transformed into animals. But the following morning they are back to normal. The group bullies the youngest, Texas. Accused of having betrayed their mission, he is subjected to a number of tests. When Travassos disappears after breaking the rules, and sends a nasty note threatening the others, Texas is sent to tell Travassos something we don't hear. The whole caregiving process is a process of games, rules, and storytelling. The seven men (who never pronounce the name "Francisco") even imagine that a monster lives behind the darkened door next to Francisco's bedroom (a reference to his subconscious?). Eventually, Harry and Nicolau conclude that Francisco is healing. They can't decide who should enter the bedroom first. Gross exiles Travassos and follows the path indicated by a coin. We then see him eating a healthy meal alone. Gross is the last face remaining, and he's the one obsessed with food.

Aquele Querido Mes de Agosto/ Our Beloved Month of August (2008) is two films in one: first a lengthy documentary of random provincial vignettes, and then a short narrative love story. The documentary actually introduces us to the actors who play in the narrative film. The narrative film is not only short, but also spends a lot of time in songs. It feels largerly improvised and it is definitely overlong (147 minutes) for what it has to demonstrate.

The film begins with a fox breaking into a cage of chickens: totally unrelated to the rest of the film. The first 75 minutes are a random documentary of Portuguese rural life. The voiceover variously explains the background of some scenes, but mostly the camera simply wanders around. The first scene has a musician on stage reciting poetic verses. There's a band playing in front of an audience of five children, there's a radio dj, folk musical culture dance music The film's crew arrives at a village and enters a house where a man has arranged domino tiles so that pushing one down will cause all of them to collapse one after the other: he proposes to show the cascading domino tiles with the opening credits of the film. We are briefly introduced to the lifeguard of a river beach, to a marching band, a group of motorcyclists... we see a campground from the viewpoint of the motorcyclists. We see children playing in soap foam. We are briefly told about the printing press of the town's newspaper. We see two belly dancers, fireworks... We follow a red firetruck on an unpaved road for the duration of a catchy upbeat song. We see an elderly couple discussing their ages. We then move to the birthday party of a man called Gordon. We see the interview of a woman from Lisbon. While we see two kids wrestling, we hear a man criticizing Paulo, who is only good at jumping from a bridge. Over the performance of Brasilio's accordion band we hear the story of rituals related to the town's feast. The filmmaker talks to a gathering of townfolks about the horror movie he wants to make. We see tourists taking pictures. We see the elderly couple discussing the kid who killed his mother. We see boar hunters hanging a dead boar, and proceeding to skin and dismember, a rather disgusting scene accompanied by a romantic tune. While a sound engineer is recording the sound of a game of quoits, a young woman comes inquiring about joining the cast of the film. The filmmaker (Gomes himself) eventually tells the girl that she can be in the film if she throws well in the game. We then see a religious procession and the voiceover is from a man who carries the saint's statue. A man named Armando sings in a karaoke bar while we see again the red firetruck up the mountains. The firemen get out of the truck and survey the landscape. We see a young woman watching the smoke of a fire from a hilltop fire lookout and then we hear her voice explaining why she chose that job. We hear another man discussing Paulo and tells how he jumped from the bridge while we watch two men chatting on a terrace.
We watch the filmmaker reading from the script about the characters of the film: Tania, a 15-year-old brunette, her 40-year-old father Domingos, who owns a taxi and manages a rock band, and the 17-year-old immigrant Helder who has a sister. The filmmaker is waiting for the actors who can play those characters.
The voiceover introduces Fabio the hockey player. He chats with the fire-lookout girl in a club during the rehearsal of a rock band called Broken Skull. We see them chatting but can't hear their voices and the images of the couple overlap with a moving landscape and with images of their activities. Again we hear about Paulo from the voiceover and learn that he still limps after a brawl with some Moroccans. He makes a living of jumping into the river from the bridge. This is all told by a member of a drumming band. Then we see a woman with a dog and a man who together roll a tree stump into a lake. We hear Paulo's version from himself, interviewed by the crew. He complains that he was never paid by his former employer. Then he relates how he was drunk when he had the fateful encounter with the Moroccans. They broke his legs and he had to wear a cast for 16 months. He takes us to the bridge from which he jumps. He tells us that the first time the river was low and he sprained an ankle touching the bottom. The radio dj announces that today they are part of a film.
After 75 minutes of this amateurish documentary, the narrative film finally begins. A band is performing at a dance club. Lena (played by the girl who wanted to play in the film) enters and is welcomed by Tania (played by the fire lookout guardian) who introduces her to her handsome cousin Helder (played by the hockey player). The trio goes swimming. Helder is also the guitarist of a rock band. Tania is the singer. Tania's father is their manager. Tania's mother left them. Father and daughter walk in the street as the religious procession passes them in the opposite direction. But the story is soon interrupted by a lengthy conversation between an actor named Manel, who complains that the film seems to be improvised, and Armando, who has also been hired as an actor. Tania and Helder help Lena write a letter to Nelson, who has written a love letter to her. Tania's father drinks with his brother Celestino. Lena drinks with Helder and gets drunk. They kiss. The following day Lena is mad at Helder. Helder is flipping through an album of family photos. He asks him mother about aunt Maria Rosa, Tania's mother. His mother tells Helder that Maria Rosa ran away with a man and that she had an impenetrable character. Tania looks just like Maria Rosa and his mother tells Helder to be careful. Later, Tania and Lena are swimming in the river and meet three foreign kids. Tania swims to Helder and leaves Lena alone with the foreigners. Helder tells Tania that he wants to quit the band. We see the traditional drumming band walk the bridge. After another concert, Helder and Tania ride together in a motorcycle and are seen by Helder's father, who doesn't like it. He talks to his brother, Tania's father, who grounds Tania without telling her why. The accordion band plays for the family and friends. However, a drunken singer starts singing about the wife who ran away. At which Domingos' brother intones a song against the singer. The band's singer responds by implying that Domingos and Tania are lovers. Later Domingos apologizes to Tania for being tough. They hug and Domingos cry. But then Domingos kisses her and she runs away. Helder plays his last concert with the band: he is leaving town the following day. After the concert, Helder insults Domingos. Then we see a wildfire and we learn that Helder saved Domingos' life. Helder and Tania spend the night together and finally have sex. The following morning Helder tells his parents that he doesn't want to leave for France, but his father slaps him in the face. The following morning, Domingos and Tania are at the bus station saying farewell to Helder and his parents. Domingoes says that Helder saved his life. Tania is crying. But then her tears turn into uncontrollable laughter. We see the newspaper being printed at the printing press with the news that Helder saved his uncle's life.
The film ends in the woods, revealing its fiction: Gomes' sound engineer is recording natural sounds because he's not happy with the sounds of the film, which include "phantom sounds" picked up by the microphone. This becomes a lengthy discussion among the film crew.

The black-and-white Tabu (2012), photographed by Rui Pocas, is also divided in two parts, set in two different eras. The second part, set in the old colonial era, tries to imitate the style of silent-era movies. From the beginning the leitmotif of the film is the sadness (saudade) that pervades everything, partly due to historical dramas (the European colonization of Africa) and partly due to the decline of religion (the daughter who doesn't care about her mother). The first part is misleading because its protagonist turns out to be just a vehicle to show the loneliness of the real protagonist, and it turns out to be merely a prologue to a love affair that happened many years earlier, told by the male lover when the female lover (the real protagonist) has just died. Since both are senile and delirious, it could also be that the rest of the film, the love affair, happens only in the imagination of the male lover. The heartbreaking ending, that links the flashback to the first part and changes the way we perceive the first part, comes as a surprise. Mostly the African natives watch expressionless like zombies the odd lives of the white colonialists. The ultimate message of the story remains cryptic, just like the allegorical crocodile that witnesses the tragic love affair.

A sad Portuguese explorer in Africa is haunted by the ghost of a mysterious woman (his old love) and incapable of happiness. One day he simply jumps into a river that is infested with crocodiles, causing the crocodile itself to become a sad animal.
It was a film watched by a middle-aged woman, Pilar. She waits in vain at the airport for a girl who is supposed to come and stay with her: a friend of this girl tells her that the girl is not coming. Pilar returns home to find her African neighbor Santa with the news that Santa's elderly employer Aurora has lost all her money at the casino. The two women drive to the casino and pick up the senile Aurora, who has done this before and this time explains that it was different because she had a convoluted dream. Pilar lives alone in her humble apartment and Aurora lives with her housemaid Santa in the apartment next door.
Pilar is a devout Catholic who also gives her time to humanitarian causes. One day she joins a group who, wearing headlights, explore a cave that was used as a hideout by the Romans and the Arabs. She studies the history of European genocide in Africa and joins a demonstration against the United Nations. Pilar is worried about Aurora, who has been abandoned by the daughter (who lives in Canada) in the hands of the housemaid. Santa has strict orders not to give Aurora any pills nor any money. Aurora is desperate and tells Pilar that they want to kill her. Aurora is obsessed with crimes that she has committed. Santa is very quiet, cold, inscrutable. Her only passtime is to read Robinson Crusoe. It is Christmas time and Santa is decorating the Christmas tree.
Pilar accidentally meets again the girl of the airport. We hear the girl tell her boyfriend that she is actually the girl whom Pilar was waiting for. Pilar gives her a present that was meant for that girl, perhaps guessing that this is actually the very girl who was supposed to stay with her. Pilar is on her way to the movie theater, where she watches a film while her older platonic boyfriend who falls asleep. This man has given her a terrible painting that she hangs in the living room. He gives her another one.
Aurora falls ill and gets delirious about a crocodile that doesn't exist. At the hospital Santa reads the palm of her hand. Later Santa tells Pilar that Aurora is going to die. Aurora's last wish is to see a man named Gianluca. Pilar tracks him down in a mental institution. She drives him to the hospital where Aurora is dying but Santa calls her with the news that it is too late. A very small group of people attend the funeral, and apparently not even the daughter is there. On the way back, Gianluca begins telling Pilar the story of Aurora.
Aurora's father was a businessman who moved to Africa but he lost everything gambling. She became a world famous hunter and even worked on a Hollywood movie. She married and moved at the base of Tabu Mountain. (We only hear Gianluca's narration, the images are silent except for an exotic and retro musical soundtrack). Meanwhile, Gianluca was a young reckless man who followed his friend Mario, grandson of a missionary, back to Africa. Mario, who had originally wanted to become a priest, was a romantic singer. Gianluca found employment in a mining company. Mario's life was saved by Aurora's husband on Tabu Mt, so the two men became close friends. Gianluca's narration stops when we see the first encounter between Aurora and him in Africa and for a few minutes we just see images and hear jungle sounds but we can't hear what the characters are saying, presumably something about a little crocodile that her husband gifts to Aurora. This becomes her pet. The couple's old servant foretells that she will get pregnant and will die alone. Aurora fires him, tired of his pagan prophecies, but she then discovers that she is indeed pregnant. Aurora's crocodile disappears and she finds it at Gianluca's place, where they suddenly become lovers. During a hunting party she misses a shot for the first time in her life. They continue their secret affair until civil war erupts in the colony. We never hear their dialogues but we hear Mario singing with his band: he captured a rare animal, sold it to a sheik and started spending the money before he received it. Mario's band plays at the villa of a rich unhappy man who plays Russian roulette with a gun until he eventually kills himself. Gianluca goes away and tries to end the relationship. The two lovers exchange a few love letters, then he stops writing. But when he returns, they resume their love affair. Mario finally finds out when he discovers Gianluca's jacket in Aurora's house. Gianluca confesses. Mario tells Gianluca that he has to stop that madness. Gianluca and a very pregnant Aurora flee on a motorcycle towards the board. Mario chases them. Mario and Gianluca get into a fight, rolling on the floor. Aurora picks up a gun and kills Mario. She then gives birth to her daughter in a frontier village. Gianluca realizes the tragedy that he has caused, betraying a friend and causing the death of another one. He is ready to surrender to the authorities and take responsibility, but Aurora's husband simply takes his wife back (and Mario's dead body) and ignores Gianluca. Surprisingly, the pro-independence rebels claim the murder of Mario as theirs. That declaration starts the civil war between Portugal and the rebels, but clears Gianluca of the crime. He leaves Africa for India, and many years later he hears that Aurora's husband has died and she has returned to Portugal with her daughter. He moves back too and tries to get in touch with her but she doesn't want to meet him. So we learn at the very end that the two lovers never met again, and that only on her very last day Aurora had decided to see the great love of her life one last time.

The structure of the six-hour, three-part Arabian Nights (2015) is loosely based on the structure of "One Thousand and One Nights", in which the beautiful Scheherazade has to tell even more interesting stories to her ferocious husband and national tyrant in order to postpone her death sentence. The film is therefore a collection of stories, but each episode is a narrative mess. The film, clearly targeting the economic reforms imposed on Portugal by the international financial powers, weaves together real-life stories and metaphorical tales of the working class. Its final message is the moral absurdity of the globalized economy, but it is also a meditation about the end of the age of national identity and about the decline of the old European powers (Portugal used to be the leader in shipbuilding technology, now it is a backward agricultural country). These episodes mix Bunuel's sardonic surrealism, Soviet social realism, Brecht's allegorical theater, and Jean-Luc Godard's satirical agit-prop cinema. Each episode is a narrative labyrinth with layers of allegorical references and postmodernist tricks, not to mention multiple languages (Portuguese, English, French and even cockerel language). Everybody tells stories, and sometimes stories of stories. There is even a machine that tells stories based on a man's health conditions. Towards the end we detect a little bit of fatigue in the director's storytelling as he begins to resort too much to pations and voiceovers.

The camera is on a boat, watching the workers of a shipyard who are standing silent. Each narrates his story. One of the narrators is nostalgic about the times when there was plenty of work at the shipyards. This is actually a documentary being filmed by a filmmaker. He is sitting at a cafe and we hear his thoughts: he is sad because people are losing jobs all over Portugal. The director, almost tearful, runs away and the crew chases him. We keep hearing his voiceover mourning the end of the shipyard. The the action shifts to the woods because there is another crisis in the country: a plague of wasps is killing the bees that make honey and destroying the livelihood of the beekeepers. The camera shows the filmmaker and his assistants buried in the sand up to their neck and condemned to die by the critics of their filmmaking skills. The director offers to tell them an intriguing story if they suspend the sentence. It is the story of a woman in her late 20s... Scheherazade ... She is actually on a motorboat... but she lands in a place that looks like ancient Mesopotamia. 25 minutes into the film, the titles finally roll in. The titles mention that today's Portugal is being devastated by an austerity program imposed by foreign powers. The narrator retells the story of the beautiful Scheherazade while we see her in Mesopotamia but then the film shifts to the present: in a restaurant some Portuguese ministers are meeting with an English-speaking foreigner and a silent banker who are responsible for the austerity program despite the protests of the leader of the workers' union. At the end of the banquet we see them leaving on camels on a dusty road as if they lived in Mesopotamia, but still wearing suit and tie. In the middle of nowhere they are confronted by a black man wearing the clothes of medieval hermits and speaking French, who reveals that the silent banker is impotent. The hermit offers a magic potion, the banker lowers his pants and spreads it on his penis, and sure enough he gets a colossal erection. All the other politicians rush to try the same potion. Healed of their sexual impotence, they all agree with the unions to suspend the austerity and increase wages. Then the action abruptly shifts to a German middle school, where a teacher is explaining how the skeleton works and a child, Johann, has a finger stuck in a hole of his desk. Then we abruptly return to the allegory of the politicians and bankers for an unhappy ending: the wizard shows up demanding money and the powerful men decide to increase taxes and implement the original plan of austerity.
Scheherazade continues with a new story. In a rural village an old lady on a cell phone tells a friend that the neighbor has sued them because their cockerel crows in the middle of the night and wants the animal put to death. The story takes place while loudspeakers blast the political message of an aspiring mayor, who wants to return the town to the splendor it enjoyed centuries earlier. The cockerel becomes a symbol of resistance and rebellion. Politicians visit the old lady and try to politicize the case. The villagers discuss arsons started by teenagers. Scheherazade changes story, saying that one thousand years earlier a young man in China was banned from his town because he loved the wrong girl. But this detour only lasts a few seconds. On the day of the elections the women decide independently to vote for all the candites. The men, instead, vote for the cockerel. At night fireworks announce that the socialist candidate has won. A judge, accompanied by a scribe who plays the accordion, visits the house of the cockerel. Men and women who were discussing the elections stop to listen to the trial. The judge claims to be able to understand the language of cockerels and asks the cockerel to justify its late-night crowing. The cockerel tells the judge (in its crowing language, translated by the subtitles for us) that it feels it is its duty to warn the villagers of impending disasters. The action shifts to three teenagers, two girls and a boy, who are having some sort of love triangle via smartphone chats (the three little actors introduce themselves with their real names before enacting the scene). One of the girls, out of jealousy, sets a fire every night in the countryside. This story is apparently told by the cockerel to the judge: the cockerel only regrets that he didn't start raising the alarm earlier, so that many hectares of land would not have burned. The judge acquists the cockerel and then walks into a restaurant to have a big lunch.
The third story begins like a horror movie, in a wet and dark cave. A union member is examined by a female doctor. He asks her if she will join "The Swim of the Magnificents". She connects his chest with a machine that tells a story based on his heart pulse. A man and a group of children on their knees on a sand dune pray St Peter that it won't rain on the first day of the year. The story is now told as the diary of the sick man, Luis, addressed to his doctor. "The Swim of the Magnificents" is a swimming context that this man, a swimming teacher, organizes every year for people who have been left unemployed by the austerity. The film now turns into a documentary of real-life stories told by people who lost their jobs, but interrupted by the sick and sad Luis' obsessive plans for the swimming context. We see him reading a speech to prospective sponsors, while flanked by his partners in the organization: a young punkette with mohawk hair, Maria, and an older man who wears a Mexican sombrero. The young lady tries to explain to Luis that the sponsors have no money because of the economic crisis. In between the stories of the unemployed and the Luis' planning with Maria, every now and then we return to the diary that the sick Luis is keeping for his doctor. He documents one of his weird dreams: a ban on swimming because a whale has died on the beach, and, when he tries to talk to the whale, the whale explodes, and next to her lies a mermaid with the face of the doctor. Maria takes Luis to the New Year's Eve party. It starts raining. Finally it is the day of the swim. Hundreds of people in swimming costumes assemble on the beach, led by Luis, Maria and the older man, who now wears the costume of a cockerel. The audio of the film disappears and we just see the crowd of half-naked people running into the ocean and then running back.
A drone scours the barren countryside. An old man with a rifle is hunting. The voiceover tells us that Simao is an evil loner, just like his father and grandfather. He is known to have a list of people to kill. He is wanted by the police and doesn't seem to care if they kill him. He only cares for his daughter. Girls follow him, strip naked and perform a strange sadomaso ritual on him. Two police officers on horse are looking for him, following the drone, and now we understand the drone belongs to the police. Simao stumbles into a horse dragging a dead man Simao recognizes the dead man as some scoundrel who deserved to die, and takes his money. Simao visits his family, plays with his daughter's children, then let the police arrest him. While he is taken to prison, people line the road giving him a hero's welcome for the way he fooled the authorities.
A ytoung woman walks around the house naked with blood dripping down her legs. She calls her mother to tell her that she lost her virginity with the man that mother recommended, Diogo. People assemble in an amphitheater while the voiceover recites a recipe for a cake. The camera moves and we realize that we are listening to the mother talking to the daughter on her mobile phone. She hangs up and walks towards a table. She is dressed like a judge and begins to address the audience about a trial about a mother and a son who sold furniture belonging to the landlord. Their excuse is that the son has incurred in debts for sex purposes and that the landlord behaved like a beast to them. The son needs sex because his wife left him, tired of being raped twice a day. The judge sentences the son, who sounds completely stupid, to be emasculated. But his wife stands up among the audience and tells the judge that she wants to forgive him and offers him access to her vagina again. She also adds that the landlord acts like a madman. The landlord now feels that he has to defend himself, and accuses accuses the genie, who has come from posterity. The genie in turn involves a rich banker. The banker's lawyer invokes the story of a child who died because an ambulance was late. A cow appears (clearly a man wearing a costume made of scraps of paper). The cow testifies that she and 12 other cows were kidnapped by evil men who loaded them onto a truck. An olive tree helped her escape. Now we see a real cow in front of an olive tree. The ambulance accidentally ran over the cow, and that's how it got delayed and the child died. Five costumed and masked people stand up in the first row of the amphitheater and confess to be the thieves who indirectly caused the whole mishap. The judge reads a list of unsolved crimes and demands that they identify theirs: they claim them all, and in fact they confess even more crimes shouting in their shrill voices. A deafmute stands up and introduces herself as the intermediary who arranged the theft on behalf of a businessman who also forced her to perform disgusting perverted acts. The businessman's lawyer stands up and accuses the pension system. An old government employee stands up to defend the pension system, but the judge recognizes him as aimpostor who pretended to be a homeless man on a tv show. A viking hat confesses having ordered the theft of cows under threat to be subjected to a lie detector, the detector being a human being, no less honest than the viking. It turns out that villagers poisoned some cows and a Cinese customer is responsible for the theft, but he has already been extradited to Cina for other crimes. 12 Chinese girls stand up and tell the judge that this Chinese is a bandit who had 13 Chinese lovers. He organized a context that consisted in several tests (all sorts of sex, massage, haircut, cooking, etc) to pick one wife, and since there were 13 lovers he ordered 13 cows. The deafmute adds another crime: someone stole her wallet. A father forces his son to stand up and confess. The judge, exhausted by this endless list of ridiculous crimes breaks down in tears.
A cute dog mysteriously appears in the tenement of a lower middle-class neighborhood. A woman gives it to her friend Luisa, who lives with her husband Humberto and is always sad. The dog does make her happier. One day she meets a nice young couple who like the dog and invites them to dinner. The young lady tells Luisa that she used to be a dealer of drugs and he used to be a user of drugs. That's how they met and fell in love. Luisa and Humberto tell the stories of the people who live in the building, in particular all the cases of evictions that have been multiplying, but also the female Brazilian nudists who suntan on the roof of the building. One day Luisa decides to give the dog to the young couple, after we learned that Humberto is terminally ill. Now we understand that perhaps the dinner was a way to find new owners for the dog. The old couple commits suicide. The young couple is penniless though and has to find a new owner for the dog. The dog ends up with a black family. The dog is a "love machine': it loves its owners unconditionally, as if there had never been another one before. This episode ends with a cryptic scene in which the dog plays with a ghost of itself.
The third part opens with Indian girl dancing by the sea. A middle-aged man interrupts her but then apologizes: he mistook her for someone else. It has been 515 days since Scheherazade married the bloodthirsty king and this man is her father, the grand vizier, who is haunted by the ghost of his wife. He knows that Scheherazade is running out of stories and soon will be killed and is ready to kill the king. Meanwhile, Scheherazade is writing to him begging him to leave the kingdom with her sister; and we hear her voice while the camera is floating underwater around corals. Children ask their father, a sexy paddleman who has dozens of children, and Scheherazade, who has run away, what happens on the other side of the world, and the camera shows the skyline of a modern city reflected upside down in the sea. The man and the woman walk to the camp of nomadic bandits, who are enjoying... modern Brazilian music (we see black and white footage of modern concerts projected over the scene of ancient Mesopotamia). This is supposed to be set in ancient Mesopotamia but Scheherazade is drinking from an aluminum can. The screen splits and we witness a brutal fight among the bandits. Then Scheherazade starts singing a Brazilian song while the paddleman plays the bongos and a bandit plays the guitar. (Obviously the director just decided to pay tribute to his favorite Brazilian music). Then Scheherazade meets Elvis the thief, breakdancer and womanizer, and finally the genie of the wind. The story is now told mostly via captions, and is one is even carried in the sky by a plane as a banner, but it is supposed to be set in Baghdad while all the action that we see is set by he coast. The action mixes modern and ancient, switching from modern bathers to fishermen. Scheherazade meets her father on the ferris wheel at the beach. They are dressed in ancient costumes and discuss her fate at the court of Baghdad, but below them we clearly see modern Portugal. Then the servants carry her in the streets of Portugal on a royal stretcher.
While the captions are still telling the story of Scheherazade, mixed with dictionary entries about birds, a new episode begins, set in contemporary Portugal. Ze Luis is a bird-trapper, specialized in teaching his birds to sing, who also spends nights in clubs where bands play heavy metal. The captions (annoyingly) continue providing details about birds, about the shanty town where Ze Luis lives, and about Scheherazade, who is supposedly telling the tale, her 516th. Ze Luis sets the traps with a friend, who uses the computer to simulate the songs that they teach the birds. The endless, exhausting, captions, each one telling the story of one of the bird trappers/trainers, begin to ruin the movie).

The final episode is told in Chinese by a young Chinese tourist who witnessed a political demonstration in the streets of Portugal. She then started a relationship with a married union leader, Cata, while living in a hostel. She got pregnant, she was fired from her job, she was accused of theft, and she worked for a countess who wanted to practice her Cantonese until she died in a fire. Finally the Chinese girl was sent back to China. Her story is again told by captions: even if she speaks it, you have to read the captions (unless you understand Chinese).

The film returns to the bird trainers, who are driving to a yearly contest. The camera follows the contest in documentarial detail, leaving the sounds of the birds in the foreground and the sound of a plane in the background. The film ends with a long sequence of the bird trapper walking back home.

Diarios de Otsoga/ The Tsugua Diaries (2021), co-directed with Maureen Fazendeiro, is a film told in reverse chronology. “Tsugua” is “August” spelled backwards. The action takes place in August 2020, during the covid pandemic, and before vaccines were available. However, the film has none of the brainy and suspenseful character of films like Memento (2000). It has, instead, the film-within-a-film theme. There is much to admire in the concept, but not as much to admire in the execution, which feels sloppy and, indeed, improvised.

The film begins with day 22. Three kids, Crista, Carloto and João, are dancing inside a house to rock music. During a break, Carloto sees Crista and João kissing, and looks upset. That is the end of the movie. On day 21 the three are inside a van. Crista proposes to throw a party but one of the kids fears that nobody will show up. On day 20 the girl is watering plants in a nursery. When it gets dark, one of the boys calls the dog Gurue. On day 19 Crista and Joao pick fruits from a tree. The boys play pool. Joao proposes to throw a party. Carloto says that nobody will show up and that he doesn't like parties anyway. Then Carloto proposes to throw a party and Joao repeats what Carloto has said, word by word. On day 18 Carloto opens the gate for a delivery man who is wearing a surgical mask: we understand the reference to the covid pandemic, and we guess that the trio is in quarantine. The delivery is a jar of butterflies. On day 17 the trio builds a large cage for butterflies. On day 16 the trio is in a swimming pool. Carloto proposes to get naked, but Joao and Crista are annoyed by his idea. On day 15 the trio begins erecting the walls of the butterfly cage. On day 14 Joao writes in his diary that they started building a butterfly cage. Carloto on the phone says that he's doing it for her and because he's a professional. He then sleeps in the van that we saw on day 21. On day 13 the trio is having breakfast when suddenly we start seeing a lot of other people in the house. It's the crew of the film, including Gomes himself. They are supposed to remain there because of the covid lockdown. They have been there for a month already. Carloto breaks the rule and goes surfing. The crew discusses the danger that he caught the virus and will spread it. Crista, who is wearing a mask, is terrified that she is supposed to kiss Carloto in a later scene, and someone suggests to change the scene so she will kiss Joao instead (now we know why the film ends how it ends). (This also explains why Carloto is sleeping separately, alone in the van). Nothing happens on day 12. On day 11 Carloto and Crista pick fruits from the trees, a scene similar to the one of day 19. We guess it is part of the film that is being made, when Carloto and not Joao was supposed to be the one in love with Crista. A member of the crew complains that Carloto is wearing his socks. Day 10 revolves around the dog Tina. On day 9 they are filming a kiss between Carloto and Crista, but they are interrupted by the dog Tina. Carloto does something so that they can resume the scene. On day 8 co-director Fazendeiro is lying on a couch and watching the progress on a monitor and a laptop. We see the trio of actors meeting with Gomes and co-writer Mariana Ricardo. Crista says that she feels uncomfortable that it all sounds improvised and poorly organized, but Gomes justifies his method because the film is told in reverse, and therefore it makes little sense to plan what will happen in the next scene. Fazendeiro takes part in the meeting via walkie-talkie. It looks like Joao has toothache. On day 7 the three actors are told that Gomes has to take Fazendeiro to the hospital and they will be the directors for one day, and they can film whatever they feel like. We see the trio in a hot tub (shot with a pink filter) trying to decide what they want to film. On day 6 the trio is washing the dogs. Later, Joao writes in his diary that he has a toothache. On day 5 Fazendeiro leaves for a doctor visit and then reports by phone that the doctor told her to rest and to lie on her back. (That's why we saw her lying on the couch and speaking via walkie-talkie). Every now and then we have been shown a rotting quince, but the camera now shows up the quince fresh. We also see a schedule of the filming. It has 26 days, not 22. On day 4 it's raining and the three actors are sheltering under umbrellas. Gomes tells Mariana that he saw a tractor and would like to put it in the film. Mariana instead wants to take inspiration from a Cesare Pavese novel, Gomes sees the quinces and picks one. The actors use a telescope at night to look at the stars. On day 3 the three actors start cleaning the swimming pool. On day 2 Crista and the cook are the only ones awake. The others are recovering from a night of heavy drinking. On the first day, which we see last, a man wearing a biohazard suit gives instructions on how to deal with covid. Everybody is wearing a mask. Then two members of the crew get on a heated but ridiculous argument over milk. And finally we see the crew partying till late.

Grand Tour (2024) is a peripatetic meta-film (mostly shot in black-and-white) that combines a Victorian-era-styled plot filmed in a studio (a plot that breaks all the romantic conventions of the Victorian-era melodrama) with documentary footage of contemporary life filmed in the streets of Asian cities. The contrast between what is being narrated (which happens in 1917) and what we see (city life of 2024) serves as a commentary on what the European colonial powers did and what they left behind. It is a conversation between present and past, and also between studio and reality. Gomes was inspired by Josef von Sternberg's exotic films starring Marlene Dietrich, which were shot in Hollywood studios with sets inventing a fictional China. The title of the film refers to a Victorian-era tour of Asia offered to wealthy British tourists and covering the major cities of Asia: that's what Gomes did in order to write the script of the film, and that's what the protagonist does in the film. The cinematography is frequently spectacular: Rui Pocas managed the stylized black-and-white studio scenes, while Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (who worked with Apichatpong Weerasethakul) provided the modern documentary footage (also Guo Liang for the Chinese part). It is only half way that we realize this is two films in one, two complementary films. A traditional tune is called "Endless Passion" in one village and "Infinite Sadness" in the other one: those could be the titles of the two films that we see. The first one is a story of infinite sadness. The second one is a story of endless passion. The ending of each is not clear. There's a chance that there is a "happy ending", although not in the same universe where the film started.

The film opens with village children climbing a primitive wooden Ferris wheel. This turns into a puppet show. Then the film goes black-and-white and a male voiceover talks in Burmese of a colonial official, Edward, in the British colony of Burma, who is taking a night train from Mandalay (where he is stationed) to Rangoon, the capital of Burma. We briefly see documentary footage of life in Myanmar, notably a man acrobatically working on electrical wires up in the air. The voiceover informs us that Edward has not seen for seven years his fiancee Molly. He is drunk. He buys a bouquet of flowers and waits at the port under heavy rain for the ship from London that is bringing his wife to Burma. But then he follows a marching band out of the dock, dumps the flowers and boards a ship to Singapore. The voiceover informs us in Burmese that it was January 1917. A British man named Reginald spots Edward at the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore: Reginald is his Molly's cousin, and owes money to the hotel. Edward has arrived with no clothes and is talking to a tailor about getting some clothes custom-made for him. A telegram is delivered to Edward: Molly is arriving. Edward ignores Reginald and takes the first ship to Bangkok. After a brief scene of the Ferris wheel in color, we return to black and white and to Edward in Thailand. A new voiceover in Thai follows him in Thailand. Edward's train derails in the jungle. Edwards draws birds and sleeps in a village of silent people. After another brief detour to color ethnographic documentary of musicians and shadow puppeteers, we return to black and white as Edward continues his journey hiring a guide and traveling on a pony following a guide and his three wives (no pony for them, just walking). He reaches Bangkok where he is welcomed by Godfrey of the British embassy. While the story is set in 1917, we see footage of modern Bandkok with buses and cars. Edward is dragged to the birthday party of a little prince but escapes when he receives another telegram from Molly. A voiceover in Vietnamese follows him as he reaches Vietnam as a stowaway on a fishing boat. He catches a bad fever. We see black-and-white footage of modern Saigon with lots of motorcycles. It is Lunar New Year: another telegram says that she's already in Saigon. He is still very sick. We see fireworks over the skyscrapers of modern Saigon in color. A voiceover in Filipino follows him in Manila, where he indulges in gambling and drinking. Again we only see footage of modern Manila and its car traffic. We see little of Edward, mostly we see the city. Again, Edward leaves when Molly is about to catch up with him, this time on a ship to Japan accompanied by four Filipino prostitutes. A voicover in Japanese tells us of his arrival in Osaka, and, again, we see little of Edward, and mostly we see the modern city. To flee the city, Edward joins a group of wandering monks who hide their heads in baskets. He stays in a temple and chats with the old monk but refuses his wisdom. He asks if there's a post office in the village. Soldiers and a middle-aged woman show up. She removes the basket from Edward's head and interrogates him, suspecting him to be a spy. He tells her that he is running away from a woman who is chasing him. She expels him from Japan. He takes a ship to Shanghai. We see black-and-white footage of modern Shanghai. Again, a telegram announces that she is arriving. A female voiceover in Japanese tells us that he boards the last boat going upriver on the Yangtze. We don't see him. We see a modern boat because the only passenger is talking on a mobile phone. We see a Chinese family playing mahjong (in color) and Edward is supposedly playing with them but we don't see him. He reaches Chongqing (footage of modern Chongqing) and heads to the mountains after hiring bearers who carry him in a sedan chair. In the forest he runs into a woman also carried in a sedan chair by bearers. The voiceover tells us that she is a bride being carried to her new home but he doesn't speak Chinese so she doesn't know. The bearers rob him during the night and he is left only with his clothes and a notebook in the middle of a forest. After wandering for a while, Edward collapses next to a decapitated Buddha statue. He is rescued by two elderly peasants who take him to the large decreptic country house of the British consul of Chengdu, Seagrave, who is playing on his guqin a tune called "Endless Passion" in one village and "Infinite Sadness" in the other one. It's primitive village in the middle of a bamboo forest. The consul, Edward and a Tibetan maid walk in the forest and see a panda. The consul is pessimistic about the British Empire. He thinks that the White man is fundamentally unable to understand the "Oriental" mind. Edward confesses to the consul that he dumped his fiancee Molly instead of marrying her and she's been following him from London to marry him, the most stubborn woman in the world. And at the beginning we learned that this has been going on for seven years. Edward abandoned his fiancee Molly on the day they were to be married, and Molly, determined to get married, is chasing him all over Asia, always sending him telegrams to announce her whereabouts.
One hour into the film, we finally see Molly. We see when she arrived in Burma and found his note that he was leaving and encouraged her to return to London. We see Molly laughing and sending a telegram to the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, guessing that's where Edward will stay. She laughs at her own disadventure. She spends the day with an Indian cinematographer who films scenes of daily life, particularly the passtimes of the Burmese. She watches a traditional elephant dance (shot in color) in a theater. She has dinner with officials, tells them her story and makes fun of her own stubborness to find her fiancee. The dinner is ruined by a vulgar and rude cattle trader, Sanders. After most of the guests have left in disgust, Sanders proposes to Molly, and she runs away feeling insulted. The only guest left at the table is an Italian operatic tenor who intones and aria from Verdi's "Il Trovatore". In Singapore she meets her cousin Reginald who suspects that Edward is a British spy. Molly laughs out loud. Just then Reginald sees an article in the newspaper about the trail that derailed in Thailand. Intermezzo of puppet theater, shot in color. Now we see her arriving at the derailed train in the jungle. She meets Lady Dragon, who is smoking calmly among the wreckage with her suitcases, another British expat, a cynical single middle-aged woman who loves the flowers of Thailand. We then see a documentary scene of peasants picking flowers in a pond. Molly reaches the prince's palace during the birthday party. We see footage of today's Bangkok. Molly is informed that Edward has just left 30 minutes earlier. We see a puppet show. The Vietnamese voiceover informs us that Molly takes a ship for Saigon but then she collapses. She is rescued by the heinous Sanders who behaves like a gentleman in love. He takes her to his country house and begs her to stay. He knows that she has an illness that requires rest, something she has not shared with Edward and Reginald. The last thing she should do is travel all over the world. Sanders' maid Ngoc (who speaks to her in French) thinks she is lucky to be courted by the rich Sanders. Molly and Sanders attend a puppet show in which the puppets have been replaced by two persons. When she recovers, Molly is taken by Ngoc to a clairvoyant who reads the future in the cards: she predicts that Molly will die soon, but also see that Edward in China. And so Molly bids farewell to Sanders and departs for Shanghai with Ngoc who also speaks Chinese. The voiceover switches to Chinese. She finds the hotel where Edward stayed and finds out that he went upriver. Informed that no boat will dare sail upriver for the next four months, Molly nonetheless hires a small boat and set out in the adverse weather. Along the way she runs into a reverend who is headed to Chengdu as well. Unlike her, he has lost faith in his mission and wants to ask the bishop to be sent back to England to live a quiet life. He is carrying his resignation letter. Molly offers him a ride. He knows it is a dangerous journay by boat. Molly's health deteriorates quickly but she insists on continuing the journey, maybe precisely because she feels that time is running out. The Chinese voiceover informs us that the boat eventually sinks and the bodies of the reverend and of the crew are never found. Ngoc rescues Molly though. The two women walk to a village where the villagers had sentenced to death three men accused of robbing a Westerner. The two women continue their journey on foot but Molly collapses and is later found frozen, precisely where we saw Edward collapse, near the Buddha head. The voiceover informs us that she died.
We see Gomes' crew shining a Fresnel light on Molly lying on the ground. Molly opens her eyes. The same two elderly peasants who rescued Edward appear. They lift Molly, who looks puzzled, and escort her away. To Sanders' country house? To Edward? Cinema resurrects the dead. And it can fabricated a happy ending out of any tragedy. (Copyright © 2015 Piero Scaruffi | Terms of use )