Diogo Dória Movies

Adapted from author Agustina Bessa-Luis' novel The Soul of the Righ, writer/director Manoel de Oliveira's Magic Mirror travels deep into the restless psyche of a well-to-do woman who longs to experience a divine vision. Previously imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Luciano (Ricardo Trepa) emerges into the real world in desperate need of a sense of direction. Luciano is haunted by the death of his sister Camila, though he does his best to stay distracted from family ghosts by going to work at the manor house of malcontent rich woman Alfreda (Leonor Silveira). Married to the much older Bahia (Duarte de Almeida), Alfreda has no children and spends much of her time discussing religious issues with eccentric Bible scholar Herschel (Michel Piccoli). When man-in-waiting Luciano fails to convince Alfreda that her fixation on the Virgin Mary is merely a delusion brought about by mental malaise, he subsequently hires local girl Filipe (Luis Miguel Cintra) to pose as the Madonna as part of an elaborate, but obscure, ruse. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The 89-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira wrote and helmed this Portuguese-French-Spanish-Swiss co-production, an anthology film drama featuring three tales linked by the theme of death. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old father, and his 60-year-old son, contemplate senility and death. "Suzy," from an Antonio Patricio story, is set in the '30s when a young courtesan dies on the operating table. "Mother of the River" is from an Agustina Bessa-Luis fable about eternal life. Shown out of competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

The human condition is examined in this Portuguese French film with opens with a warning that informs the audience that the following is not a documentary but a moral tale about the anachronisms of modern society. The story, set in an aging neighborhood filled with interesting characters, focuses upon an old blind man and his daughter. Every day, the blind one sits in a doorway sells thread and begs. The daughter spends her days ironing and complaining. Their neighborhood is not a wealthy one, and many passerby are envious of the old beggars' box of accumulated coins. It has been stolen before so the man and the daughter's boyfriend keep an eye upon it. Tragedy ensues when the box does indeed disappear. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This biographical drama was made especially to gratify devotees of the life and work of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco. Chief among the writers' admirers is this film's director Manoel de Oliveira, who has devoted two earlier films to stories by him. Branco is considered to be one of the greats writers in recent Portuguese history and was also (like his colleagues throughout Europe) much given to scandalizing society with a string of mistresses. In this film, he is shown to be a self-absorbed individual, much given to bouts of depression. During one of these, he shot and killed himself. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Wim Wenders's sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World ran into serious issues given its whopping length. The original cut ran 20 hours. Realizing that this would make theatrical screenings impossible, Wenders heavily edited the picture and wound up with a 5-hour cut with which he is reportedly satisfied (known as the 'Director's Cut'). Warners wouldn't go for this either, however, and whittled it down to 2 1/2. That version - which premiered theatrically in the U.S. on Christmas Day 1991- makes little sense ,with a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Unsurprisingly, it confounded critics and lay viewers and infuriated its director, who all but disowned it. (Echoes of Once Upon a Time in America!) As with the Leone film, though, the Director's Cut of World did evetually see the light of day. It's now widely available in a multi-disc collector's set throughout Europe, and the public response to that version has been far more favorable. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

Episodes from entire military history of Portugal are told through flashbacks as a professorish soldier recounts them while marching through a Portuguese African colony in 1973. He easily draws his comrades into philosophical musings, and the little contingent suffers badly at the hands of the local military opposition. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This odd film is a major representative of an even odder film genre: direct-to-celluloid opera. It was commissioned by the Portuguese master of style, director Manoel de Oliveira from composer João Paes. Musically, it ranges from 19th-century romanticism to popular, modernist and even "post-modernist" styles. In the initially tame story, a host-narrator tells the story of a wedding between the two lovebirds: Viscount d'Aveleda and the beautiful Marguerite. However, what happens in the bridal chamber is incredibly bizarre. The events after that are even stranger (the film out-does even Luis Buñuel in that department), and the wedding guests and family indulge in cannibalism, among other perversions. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Director Jorge Silva Melo has developed a viable, though highly intellectual mystery story about the world of art and culture and murder in this somewhat theatrical presentation. When German artist Bernd Hoffmann (Michael König) arrives in Lisbon to oversee the installation of his paintings in a joint exhibition with another Berlin artist, Hanna Brauer (Charlotte Schwab), Hanna never shows up. Hoffmann is puzzled because he is certain he saw a video sequence with Hanna at the exhibition, and he begins to look for her. Another Lisbon cultural center, a theater, is also having problems that may or may not be related -- and the mystery deepens when Hanna is found dead, either by her own hand, or murdered. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi