Paulo Branco Movies

When several Americans start out on their trek through a large national park, they have no idea that their lack of expertise will get them hopelessly lost -- and facing starvation, they have some grim alternatives available if they want to survive. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Originally Dans la Ville Blanche, the Swiss/Portuguese In the White City features Bruno Ganz as a cinematically inclined Swiss sailor. While on liberty in Lisbon, Ganz decides to soak in the sights, committing his visit to posterity with an 8-millimeter movie camera. His ship sets sail, but Ganz remains in Lisbon, trying to explain his "escape" (which includes an affair with chambermaid Teresa Madruga) in long rambling letters to his wife. In the White City was directed by Alain Tanner, best known for his stream-of-consciousness Jonah Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In a specialized, hermetic drama about love won and lost, not necessarily by the same individuals, novice director Christine Laurent has focused on the backstage melodramas of an opera company. The conductor for an upcoming performance of the Marriage of Figaro has his mind and heart on other matters -- an entrancing diva who keeps him enraptured with her presence and voice. In the meantime, he finds fault with his cast members who cannot, of course, measure up to the woman of his dreams. As singers encounter one problem or another, it is clear that something has to be done about the conductor. Director Laurent designed costumes for both theater and opera, giving her some insight into the venue. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A hooker tries to overcome her fate by marrying out of her profession in this conventional drama by Jean-Claude Guiguet. Marie (Marie Christine Rousseau) and another prostitute with a young son live in a hotel near the Saint-Martin canal. Marie has fallen in love with Paul (Stephane Jobert), and the two carry on with their plans to marry even though Marie's pimp is brutal and not about to approve of Marie's departure. To make his opinion known, he has her beaten and knocked around. The older woman who runs the hotel has taken Marie and the other hooker under her wing, yet she is certainly no match for the pimp and his henchmen. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In a storyline that brings together an odd assortment of characters, director, co-scripter, and editor Jacques Rozier has fashioned some humorous segments in this New Wave-influenced creation. Two ticket inspectors, Le Garrec and Pontoiseau (Bernard Menez and Luis Rego), are working the Maine-Ocean train to Brittany when they come across a Brazilian samba queen (Rosa-Maria Gomez) who defies all attempts at communication. Later on, a female attorney on the train is shown in court as she and her client, a sailor charged with assault, twist their tongues around a defense and decisively lose their battle with the French language. Circumstances conspire to bring the train conductors and the samba queen, among others, together on an island off the Brittany coast, where a dance rehearsal gets underway with disastrous results for one of the conductors. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Two gunmen chase after an anthropologist on the run in this convoluted, low-budget drama. In spite of several technical flaws in production and amateurish performances, the film shared prize money given by the CIGA hotel chain at the 1987 San Sebastian Film Festival. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The terrifyingly destructive power of a woman's sexual obsession provides the compelling subject for this psychological study of a woman's descent into madness from French filmmaker Alain Tanner. It is the tale of Parisian actress Mercedes who is first seen attempting to break up with the obsessive Arab Johnny, who stalks her until she meets handsome newspaper writer Pierre on the subway and goes with him for an afternoon fling. Before the sweat even dries, she finds herself hopelessly in love with him. Pierre is flattered and encourages her desperate devotion, but soon after their affair begins, he is called off on a business trip leaving the suddenly distraught Mercedes alone with her demons. Though preparing for a new play, she is unable to concentrate and barely able to function without Pierre. She quits the production, locks herself in Pierre's apartment and quietly begins falling apart until he returns. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this French romantic drama, Stephane (Michel Feller) wants to form a romantic bond with Sabine (Clotilde de Bayser), and to do this has left his pregnant girlfriend behind. Sabine would rather be with Bruno (Jean-Philippe Ecoffey) her former boyfriend, a stage actor. Bruno in turn is much more interested in his current girlfriend. Each person is, in his or her own way, attempting to deal with issues of maturity and responsibility and repeatedly fails to find happiness or even a decently tranquil compromise between their desires and the realities of their situations. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Filipa has to return to Portugal from Switzerland, where she has been living, to marry. She has invited her Swiss friend Marie to come along. Marie is a young lady who has enough money to indulge her doubts and scruples about what she is going to do with her life. She is between relationships at the moment, and the two old friends head off for Portugal. As they talk over their lives and plans for the future, it becomes very obvious that they live in two entirely different worlds. Rather than harming their relationship, these differences only heighten it. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

In this symbolic and philosophically weighty film, all of the inhabitants of a Portuguese mental asylum suffer from religious delusions of one kind or another -- even the cynic who denies the value of any religions at all. One couple re-enacts the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden, and then the woman who played at being Eve plays at being St. Teresa de Avila. Another man thinks he's a character from a Dostoyevsky novel, and yet another claims to have in his possession a fifth gospel from the Bible. Everyone has a point of view and is not shy about stating it, defending it in debate with the others with great sincerity, though (the reviewers claimed) with very little elegance or wit. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

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, All Movie Guide

Samuel has made his way to a pier along the river and plans to jump in and drown himself. He is standing there gathering his courage, when he is accosted by an older man, a sailor who has come there for the same reason. The sailor, Eloi, declines Samuel's invitation to join him in the jump and instead invites him back into town with him. The two return to Lisbon and begin a two-day carouse, interspersed with a visit to Eloi's bedridden shrew of a wife, and culminating in Samuel's meeting the sailor's daughter, a deaf-mute hooker. This being a movie (albeit one with some artistic pretensions), Samuel immediately falls in love with her. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide