Adriano Luz

Synopsis
Follows a jealous countess, a wealthy businessman, and a young orphaned boy across Portugal, France, Italy and Brazil where they connect with a variety of mysterious individuals.Read More »

Raúl Ruiz is one of the great cinematic self-perpetuators, like Louis Feuillade and Jacques Rivette—a film like this gathers a motion and a rhythm that makes it feel like it could on and on, self-generating new stories and new characters ad infinitum. Based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco (whose writing has been the source for Oliveira’s similarly fatalistic romance, Doomed Love), Mysteries of Lisbon is, to paraphrase a line from one of its many characters used to describe a disastrous relationship he had, a game that turns into a bourgeois romantic drama, to which I would add, that turns into a game. It starts—as all stories must?—with an orphaned boy questioning his parentage and falling into a fever, and out of that starting point the film evolves less as a story than a cartography of characters crossing points in space and time.Read More »

Quote:
It all begins when an average family (slightly chilly because they’re forced to take their vacation out of season) is struck by good fortune.
Jesus the couple’s young son, finds a hidden and forbidden treasure in the sands of a deserted beach: the wealth of the hearth.
The same day, and not so far away, two priests decide to close the doors to their church due to lack of a congregation, and auction off the images of their beloved saints.
Between the wealth of the heavens and the spirit of matter they embark on an adventure. A banker with auditory hallucinations when he talks about money.Read More »