Word: oliveira
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...main railroad terminal, Dora, a sour old woman (uncompromisingly played by Fernanda Montenegro), scratches out a living writing letters for the illiterate. When a customer is killed in an accident, the dead woman's son (the winsomely suspicious Vinicius de Oliveira) becomes Dora's responsibility. The two set out across the Brazilian vastness to find the boy's errant father. Theirs is an odyssey of simple problems, simple emotional discoveries, a relationship full of knots that Salles permits to unwind in an unforced, unsentimental fashion. His imagery, like his storytelling, is clear, often unaffectedly lovely, and quietly, powerfully haunting...
...there is no ghoulish sentiment in the rarefied pleasures afforded by Manoel de Oliveira's luminous film. The Franco-Portuguese Voyage to the Beginning of the World is a fable about old age reconciling itself to memory and destiny. Two histories intertwine: a veteran director, also named Manoel (Mastroianni), goes back to the places of his childhood; and an ancient Portuguese woman (Isabel de Castro) meets the French-born son (Jean-Yves Gautier) of her long-lost brother. The old woman is wary of her Francophone nephew--she keeps asking, "Why doesn't he speak our speech?"--until the nephew...
...Manoel's recollections, they are engaging, autumnal; he wears the wizened smile of a man who knows he is visiting his youth for the last time. It is easy to see this as Mastroianni's testament, but it is also Oliveira's. This amazing auteur, whose spare, poignant films (Doomed Love, The Cannibals) are rarely seen in the U.S., has been directing since 1929--and has made a film every year of the '90s. Oliveira will be 90 in December. On the evidence of this vigorous Voyage, he is just hitting his stride...
Considering that it has stars as flashy as Catherine Deneuve and John Malkovich, Manuel de Oliveira's latest release, "The Convent," dives suprisingly deep into the obscure. Even those blessed with an adequate understanding of Goethe's Faust, the Old and New Testaments and astrology may not be able to follow the characters' thoughts and actions as they glide through the rubble of an ancient Portugese convent...
...Oliveira builds on the sexuality, religion and Faustian philosophy of the convent setting and tries to weave a new, intricate twist into the good vs. evil plot. But after 90 minutes of sparse dialogue, sparse interaction and even sparser coherence, "The Convent" ends with an inexplicable supernatural occurence--inexplicable in that it does not complete, expand or shed light on any previous theme. With its too frequent literary and biblical references and the overwhelmingly stark, gripping scenery, "The Convent" strives toward artsy epic but falls somewhere in the midst of artsy mediocrity...