THE STRANGE CASE OF ANGELICA

Portugal, 2010, 95 minutes, Colour.
Ricardo Trepa, Pilar Lopez de Ayala.
Directed by Manoel de Oliveira.

If an audience did not know who the director is and his style of film-making for almost 80 years (there is no evidence apart from de Oliveira to suggest how a centenarian makes films; he was born in 1908), they might well give it a miss as a throwback to romantic film-making and a style that owes much to the visuals of the silent era. They might find it quite fey as a romantic fantasy.

But, we do know who made the film and his extraordinary film legacy, beginning his career soon after the advent of sound. He has maintained the effects of this style for years. But, de Oliveira is a classic artist in film and in poetic imagination. And, that is what this film is, a poetic look at a photographer who becomes obsessed with the dead young woman whose photograph he has been commissioned to take.

There is some irony in the fact that he is a refugee Sephardic Jew and the dead Angelica’s family, as seen in her nun sister, wary of Jews if not anti-Semitic.

This is a Portuguese world which is both modern and which represents the director’s past, a land of aristocracy and snobbery, catholic devotion and old world manners.

A poetic indulgence in romanticism and essential, of course, for the complete works of de Oliveira.

1. The film of an old man, his visions of life and death?

2. The visual style, the fixed camera, the compositions, the awkward direction and acting?

3. The Chopin music playing in the background?

4. Fantasy and dreams?

5. The Jewish background, Christian wariness? Anti- Semitic attitudes? The crucifix on Isaac’s body at the end?

6. The visuals of the city, night and day, the river, the traffic? Scenes of the hills, the church, the ground being worked on, the cemetery?

7. The opening with the rain, seeking the photographer, the recommendation of Isaac?

8. Isaac, his experiments, his room, Justina, offering the job, hurrying, the demands of the family?

9. The house, the nun receiving him, wariness at his name, Isaac? Angelica’s death, her husband’s grief, the people mourning, the mother and her matter-of-factness, Angelica laid out, smiling?

10. The photos, changing the light bulb, Angelica opening her eyes and smiling? The effect on Isaac?

11. His obsession, dreams, her apparitions, floating? His death and her receiving him? Like an angel?

12. The workers in the field, the hard labour, the earth, Isaac photographing them?

13. The photos hanging and Angelica in the midst of the workers?

14. Justina, her concern, the chat with her boarders?

15. The beggar at the church and his asking for money?

16. Delivering the photos, the harshness of the maid, his return? The order, his forgetting?

17. His final collapse, the dream, the bird in the dream, the bird’s death in reality? The doctor and the nurse?

18. Poetic and romantic?