I'd say that eight out of 10 cinema-goers will not appreciate this minimalist adaptation of Comte de Guilleragues's novella Letter of a Portuguese Nun. That's not to say it isn't exceptional.
The Portuguese poet, Eugène Green, directs and his style is long and slow. The story is acted without expression and the oracular dialogue will send some to sleep.
However, from the first lengthy panning shot of Lisbon to its concentration elsewhere on the face of Leonor Baldaque, its leading actress, it is extraordinary to look at. It is also augmented by fado, sung by two of the best exponents in the business.
Baldaque plays a Parisian actress appearing in a film version of the same novel about an 18th-century nun who falls for a French naval officer. Between the shooting she succours a six-year-old orphan, meets an impoverished nobleman, conducts an affair with her leading man and talks in mystical terms to a nun she finds praying in an old chapel.
The film carries with it reminders of Antonioni and Rohmer as well as that tiny group of Portuguese auteurs, led by the centenarian Manoel de Oliveira, whose films arrive at festivals but seldom go much further afield. "I never see French films. They're for intellectuals," a hotel receptionist tells the actress. I doubt if he'd appreciate this one either. But in its entirely intransigent, uncompromising way, it works. And rather memorably too.
The Portuguese Nun (A Religiosa Portugesa)
