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The Portuguese Nun (2009)

Director: Eugène Green

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3 reviews

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From Time Out London

‘The Portuguese Nun’ is French writer-director Eugène Green’s love letter to Lisbon. His reverence for the city's history, architecture, skyline and music inspires this meandering tale of nervy, French-Portuguese actress Julie (Leonor Baldaque) and the epiphanies she experiences while filming a series of silent tableaux to illustrate a recitation of the anonymous French seventeenth-century text, ‘Letters of a Portuguese Nun’. Now, if your trusty pretention-o-meter is already overheating, then just switch it right off, as the tone Green adopts here is one of almost childlike sincerity dashed, of course, with a strain of delicate, absurdist humour.

This is Green’s fourth feature, and his first to receive UK distribution. It’s constructed in his customary style that draws heavily on the sort of clipped, neutral non-performance favoured by Bresson and the crisp, flat-on compositions of Ozu. The film is an exercise in economy and yet swells with romance and mystery. Baldaque’s huge, olive-green eyes are her primary acting tool, and Green allows his camera to drink in their gaze. We drift around the city, as one scene melts in to the next and Julie’s search for meaning takes in her co-star, a suicidal local, a displaced child, the reincarnation of a dead king and the director of her film (Green himself). Radiant, perplexing and distinctive, Green’s world is a place where art and life converge: it’s an enchanting place in which to get lost.

Author: David Jenkins

Time Out London Issue 2109: 20 – 26 January, 2011

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User reviews of this film

Smoky said...

Posted on Jan 30 2011 12:59 I saw the Portuguese Nun last night and I have to say I was blown away. I can see that it won’t be for everyone, but for my part I completely agree with the review above. It’s a masterpiece, a completely unique film language and sensibility. How often can you say that about films you see? I’d urge anyone to see it while it’s still on, I don’t think there are many more screenings.

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jaycee said...

Posted on Jan 24 2011 13:02 I like those emotionally austere, economical films that Bresson and japanese directos tend to do, but to mention them in the same breath as this is to do them a huge disservice. I have never seen such a load of pretentious stilted twaddle, and the fact that the director was aiming for just this kind of stylised approach is no excuse for a film that's boring, ridiculous laughable (there was a lot of quiet snickering in the screening I attended) and pretty much unendurable. In one scene in a club, the real director, playing the director of the film within this film (what a unique and daring device!), gets cut dead by a woman he's trying to dance with; she had the right idea. There's no point being original and keeping faith with your own "overall aesthetic" if you are a pretentious "intellectual" knocking out work that Ed Wood would be ashamed of.

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Will said...

Posted on Oct 22 2009 17:56 A disappointingly reactionary response.
Dismissing Green's techniques as "perversely affected" is especially short-sighted. Over his past three features he has developed a style that is wholly idiosyncratic, and really affecting when accepted on its own terms. There is nothing fatuous about it, and I could not imagine such a charge being leveled against similarly stylistically total directors like Wong Kar-wai, Arnaud Desplechin or Bresson.
Green's "Le Pont des Arts" and "Le Monde Vivant" are easily two of the most enthrallingly original and complete films of the early 00s. I have not yet seen "The Portuguese Nun", but GA's objections just seem too close to some of the more conservative French responses to Green's earlier work.
I agree that there are elements of his films that in another context could appear portentous, but somehow they cohere completely with Green’s overall aesthetic. However, they are certainly more rewarding on re-viewings and clearly require a more relaxed, receptive attitude. But, again, the same could be said with regard to the other directors I mentioned.

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