The Jester

This takes patience (a degree in Portuguese studies wouldn't go amiss, either), but ultimately rewards it by pulling a dozen apparently separate threads together into a vivid picture of Lisbon's young intelligentsia in 1978, when the idealism roused by the Portuguese revolution finally died. Most of the central characters are involved in putting on a play (adapted from Alexandre Herculano's novel The Jester), and the film gets astonishing mileage from the old device of counterpointing their on-stage and off-stage lives. The off-stage issues include gun-running, a sexually ambivalent triangle, and a murder; the on-stage scenes are designed sumptuously enough to recall the heyday of Michael Powell.