Along with the even more disappointing PARTY (1996), this is the least Oliveira I've watched so far. The film is an interminable two-and-a-quarter hours talk-fest of a family saga in modern-day Portugal; while featuring a couple of fine performances by its lovely leading ladies (Leonors Baldaque and the ubiquitous Leonor Silveira), the narrative is never as gripping (or even engaging) as its makers seem to think. Incidentally, it has a deliberately stilted (read: archaic) feel to it redolent of the final works of various master film-makers such as Carl Theodor Dreyer's GERTRUD (1964), Robert Bresson's L'ARGENT (1983) and even Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT (1999); the irony is that Oliveira, 94 at the time of filming this, is still at it six years later and, on the contrary to THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE, those above-mentioned films had all been remarkable movies!
Anyhow, the narrative involves Baldaque, member of an impoverished family, being married off to a crippled boy of aristocratic lineage; their relationship is troubled, however, due to her being pursued by the husband's best friend but, even more so, by the boy's own affair with his friend's female associate (Silveira) owner of a chain of brothels! The girls are effectively played up as opposites with Baldaque the saint and Silveira (clearly) the sinner; for obvious reasons, they don't get along though, at one point, there's a surprising suggestion of Silveira being a lesbian given her (ufortunately for the viewer but not unexpected in this company) unfulfilled longing for her rival! Similarly, the final scene sees Baldaque bafflingly rejecting a lawyer/admirer's claims of her being a good girl!
By far, the film's most incongruous moments are those set inside Silveira's discotheque especially the one in which a group of masked revelers casually spill alcohol on the floor as they dance and then set fire to the place (as it happens, a deliberate attempt by the owners to claim insurance money in order to pay off a debt to their ruthless financiers!) and during which Baldaque's drunken husband perishes. Besides, the film is intermittently accompanied by a strident violin-led score which grows more annoying with the passage of time not to mention pointless and, alternately, static and moving transition shots of the landscape which add little except length to the film.
Anyhow, the narrative involves Baldaque, member of an impoverished family, being married off to a crippled boy of aristocratic lineage; their relationship is troubled, however, due to her being pursued by the husband's best friend but, even more so, by the boy's own affair with his friend's female associate (Silveira) owner of a chain of brothels! The girls are effectively played up as opposites with Baldaque the saint and Silveira (clearly) the sinner; for obvious reasons, they don't get along though, at one point, there's a surprising suggestion of Silveira being a lesbian given her (ufortunately for the viewer but not unexpected in this company) unfulfilled longing for her rival! Similarly, the final scene sees Baldaque bafflingly rejecting a lawyer/admirer's claims of her being a good girl!
By far, the film's most incongruous moments are those set inside Silveira's discotheque especially the one in which a group of masked revelers casually spill alcohol on the floor as they dance and then set fire to the place (as it happens, a deliberate attempt by the owners to claim insurance money in order to pay off a debt to their ruthless financiers!) and during which Baldaque's drunken husband perishes. Besides, the film is intermittently accompanied by a strident violin-led score which grows more annoying with the passage of time not to mention pointless and, alternately, static and moving transition shots of the landscape which add little except length to the film.