There is probably no point writing this review. The film left theaters here in Paris yesterday and will probably never be screened anywhere ever again.
However, this film is so bad that I have to write something. I can feel it in my body like a bad meal that I've eaten and need to throw up.
I should have walked out of the theater when I realized that it was a political movie. Before the story starts, the director tells us that the stories were inspired by the austerity measures implemented in Portugal in 2014. Political films are never good. Political "art" films are universally terrible.
The first chapter in the movie is the best. We follow an old criminal around. The camera work itself generates a sense of mystery. Not much...but just enough to keep the spectator from walking out. We don't need dialogue. A story looks like it is beginning to take shape, but it never does.
The film begins to go off the rails with the next section. The director treats us to a heavy-handed, juvenile illustration of the impossibility of assigning blame in a corrupt society. I found myself averting my eyes from the screen the way you avert your eyes from someone who is humiliating themselves in order not to embarrass them further. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.
The last section, however, is the worst. It is so depressing. It is depressing because it is boring. There is no life here. The director is trying to show us the nefarious effects of austerity on the Portuguese people...he succeeds only in making us feel joyless.
I don't want to dedicate any more time to this terrible film. Above all it is boring, dreadfully boring. People were walking out at a rate of one person every twenty minutes. There were only about twelve people to begin with. Indeed, I walked out fifteen minutes before the end of the film...my way of giving the bird to this awful movie.
DON'T WATCH IT!
However, this film is so bad that I have to write something. I can feel it in my body like a bad meal that I've eaten and need to throw up.
I should have walked out of the theater when I realized that it was a political movie. Before the story starts, the director tells us that the stories were inspired by the austerity measures implemented in Portugal in 2014. Political films are never good. Political "art" films are universally terrible.
The first chapter in the movie is the best. We follow an old criminal around. The camera work itself generates a sense of mystery. Not much...but just enough to keep the spectator from walking out. We don't need dialogue. A story looks like it is beginning to take shape, but it never does.
The film begins to go off the rails with the next section. The director treats us to a heavy-handed, juvenile illustration of the impossibility of assigning blame in a corrupt society. I found myself averting my eyes from the screen the way you avert your eyes from someone who is humiliating themselves in order not to embarrass them further. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was over.
The last section, however, is the worst. It is so depressing. It is depressing because it is boring. There is no life here. The director is trying to show us the nefarious effects of austerity on the Portuguese people...he succeeds only in making us feel joyless.
I don't want to dedicate any more time to this terrible film. Above all it is boring, dreadfully boring. People were walking out at a rate of one person every twenty minutes. There were only about twelve people to begin with. Indeed, I walked out fifteen minutes before the end of the film...my way of giving the bird to this awful movie.
DON'T WATCH IT!