Country: Portugal, France
Year: 2010
Duration: 255'
mysteries of lisbon João is fourteen years old and lives in a religious institute under the protective wing of Father Dinis, who used to be an aristocratic profligate and now strongly upholds justice. João fervently wishes to find out who his parents are. He is taken into the presence of his mother, a beautiful countess who is married to a rich and unscrupulous businessman. The boy thus finds himself struggling with jealousy, violent passions and discoveries that unfold in Portugal, Italy, France and Brazil, slowly revealing his true identity. “It’s hard to say if this is a narrative or an experimental film. It isn’t narrative because it is neither divided into three acts nor does it have a central conflict. It doesn’t follow the theory of free will and it doesn’t even involve resolving an enigma. It isn’t narrative and it isn’t experimental, but you could say that it is both things together because it is constructed on a principle of the image that calls for sequence shots that are like a container of other shots which are created by the spectator and are not explicitly in the film.”
Biography
film director
Raúl Ruiz
(Puerto Montt, Chile, 1941 - Paris, 2011) took up cinema in Argentina. After returning to Chile he was involved in avant-garde theater. In 1968, he debuted in film with Three Sad Tigers, Golden Leopard in Locarno. Forced into exile after Pinochet’s coup d’état, he found refuge in France. He made his name on the international scene with The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting. He has then directed over one hundred films, making him one of the most prolific directors of all time. In 1996 he made Three Lives and Only One Death, the second to the last film Marcello Mastroianni acted in; the next year he received a Silver Bear in Berlin for Genealogies of a Crime. He then continued making films until his death, always working alongside his wife, director and editor Valeria Sarmiento.
FILMOGRAFIA
Tres tristes tigres (1968), L’hypothèse du tableau volé (1979), La ville des pirates (La città dei pirati, 1983), L’éveillé du Pont de l’Alma (1985), Trois vies et une seule mort (Tre vite e una sola morte, 1996), Généalogie d’un crime (Genealogia di un crimine, 1997), Shattered Image (Autopsia di un sogno, 1998), Le temps retrouvé (Il tempo ritrovato, 1999), Les âmes fortes (2001), Cofralandes, rapsodia chilena (2002), Médée (2003), Días de campo (2004), Le domaine perdu (2005), Klimt (2006), La recta provincia (2007), Nucingen Haus (Miss Christine, 2008), L’estate breve (doc., 2010), Mistérios de Lisboa (2010).
Cast
& Credits
regia/director
Raúl Ruiz
soggetto/story
dall’omonimo romanzo di/from the novel of the same title by Camilo Castelo Branco
sceneggiatura/screenplay
Carlos Saboga
fotografia/cinematography
André Szankowski
montaggio/film editing
Valéria Sarmiento, Carlos Madaleno
scenografia/production design
Isabel Branco
musica/music
Jorge Arriagada, Luís Freitas Branco
suono/sound
Ricardo Leal, Miguel Martins, António Lopes
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Adriano Luz (padre/Father Dinis), Maria João Bastos (Ângela de Lima), Ricardo Pereira (Alberto de Magalhães), Clotilde Hesme (Elisa de Montfort), Afonso Pimentel (João/Pedro da Silva), João Luís Arrais (Pedro da Silva da bambino/as a Child), Albano Jerónimo (il conte/Count de Santa Bárbara), Léa Seydoux (Blanche de Montfort), Melvil Poupaud (il colonnello/Colonel Ernest Lacroze), Malik Zidi (il visconte/Viscount d’Armagnac)
produttore/producer
Paulo Branco
produzione/production
Clap Filmes
vendita all’estero/world sales
Doc & Film International
