Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl

Another academic and erudite Portuguese film… yet more tolerable than many others I've seen.

Despite considering myself a patriot, I recognize that Portuguese cinema is not particularly good when compared to Spanish, French, Italian or British cinema. We simply don't have the capital and people to make movies as good as theirs. As I've said in other reviews I've written, Portuguese cinema ends up focusing on two distinct fields: bad taste comedies with strong popular appeal, and academic, erudite and not infrequently unpalatable films that (almost) never leave the "festival circuit".

The film that brings us here is a small work directed by Manoel de Oliveira, a dean of filmmakers who gained a very good reputation, but who does not seem to have ever achieved international recognition at the height of what he deserved. In fact, and as much as I may sometimes criticize him, and disagree with his style or options, Oliveira was a good director and a man who understood and lived cinema like very few others. And the proof is the fact that he released this film at the age of one hundred years old!

The script is strictly based on a short story by Eça de Queirós, one of the greatest and most notable Portuguese writers, and was conceived as a light romantic comedy. So light that it didn't make me laugh for a single minute! Personally, I see it more as a moral melodrama. What we have here is, basically, the ravaged infatuation of an emaciated, gentle secretary with a young blonde woman who appears to be just as gentle, docile, and characterless as he is. She is the archetype of the ethereal, angelic and apparently perfect woman who, in the 19th century, was well considered for society. He will, by various means, try to make enough fortune for the marriage, even going against his uncle, who had him as an employee in his trading house.

The film is reasonably good. It could be better if it was a little more spirited (it's supposed to be a comedy, right?) and if cer...