The Mysteries of Lisbon – 7

One take is that the entire movie is the coma-induced imaginings of Joao, an abandoned bastard longing to know his real parents. That would explain the fancy balls, the imprisoned duchess, the Dickensian coincidences and the consistent world view of nobles flirting, seducing and changing identities. Another take: let’s make a movie that animates all those 18th-century paintings from Goya to fetes galantes and just imagine what those peoples’ lives were like. More accurately, this was a six-episode made-for-TV soap opera that was never meant to hang together as a 4.5-hour movie. If once a week another character tells us his/her story, there is a regular accretion that fills out the picture; jammed together, however, the repetition is risible, the plot expands instead of coming together, and for where we end up, we feel we could have done without the last two hours of exposition. The many shots borrowed from artworks are beautiful, and the exposure to the Portuguese cinema of Raul Ruiz is not without charm.