The dawn of Portuguese cinema

[For you that's reading this and saying "why is she writing about Portuguese cinema in english?"...don't even. ]

For many years I have been resisting Portuguese cinema.

I feel almost embarrassed to say it but every time I watched a Portuguese movie with Portuguese actors was either about a great novel about other times where we were a greater country (this was ages ago, kids, nobody gives a damn about us, now, but we used to rule every corner of this world) or it was about our country. Don't get me wrong my country is full of untold stories I'm sure ...still, they kinda felt all the same...boring.

This week though, I witness something great.

I went to the movies twice in one week and the films that I choose were all 100% made in Portugal. 

Day one : A movie about a novel (what else?). That was really what was in my head going in the theater "I just hope I don't fall asleep and snore, please, oh please don't let me snore!" 

Then I literally ate this words syllable by syllable. 

A doomed love in Os Maias, João Botelho
Credits

Os Maias de João Botelho was much more than a movie, it combined, brilliantly, characteristics of a live play and it work. Every bit of it worked. João Botelho took a novel that was told, untold and then told again, a novel that has been giving high scholars nightmares and he transformed it into something "almost" cool. He got it, the actors got it and they made magic happen in a way that for me was truly new for the Portuguese cinema.

Day two:  Ok, by then I was like "Can I be amazed twice? No, of course not" So me and my high horse entered the movie theater haunted by a previous good-so-they-cant-duplicate-it feeling. Then...there was the opening scene from Os Gatos Não Têm Vertigens de João Pedro Vasconcelos: five minutes into the movie and I was already sobbing like a little girl. 

No! Something like this can't happen, not with a Portuguese movie! They are supposed to be boring.

Oh yes it can and with the same intensity it also made me laugh. Above all, there was something about this moments, they were comedic but they also were full of magic and love and that "sugar-spice-and-everything-nice" factor that I love about going to the cinema. 

"Arsenic!" in Os gatos não êm vertigens, João Pedro Vasconcelos
Credits

I expected nothing, I was given everything, I laughed and cried, I was concerned and wanted to punch somebody, by the end I felt completely exhausted like I've been to war (jezz! exaggerate much?) but it also  lifts you up so when you leave the cinema there is a smile stuck to the corner of your mouth ( Oh god women! Control your cheesiness!). 

João Pedro Vasconcelo's movie washes away all the stupid and petty shit from your day, can you ask for more? Totally worth it.

Keep that quality coming, guys.

Make us proud.

Your TopCrusher,

Alex

Julie Delpy's women

If you're a man, there's no way you ever look at your wife, girlfriend, mother or grandmother and thought "I 've got you all figured out", because if you did, then you are probably wrong. 

Julie Delpy, however, knows us inside and out.

Julie Delpy is a genious
Credits

The french distant beauty sitting on a train in Before the Sunrise, begun her acting carrer with a film from maestro Jean Luc Goddard, one of the most acclaimed directors of all time. Delpy grew up on a house full of actors, both mother and father that actually have feature in her latest movies, so naturally she had a crush on Ingrid Berman and all the itallian guys from the seventies: Brando, Pacino, De Niro...(oh! haven't we all at some point). But what makes Julie Delpy see women so clearly, what makes her characther so relatable that you almost feel robbed like the reactions she's having on screen and words she's speaking were yours at some moment in time? 

How does she do it without making rool your eyes at the female character she's portraying?

How does Julie Delpy get us?

She's a great actress, that might be it. 

No, there's more. 

She has the soul of an artist an she's sensitive and emphatetic. 

No, there's more. 

Truth be told, she's a genious. She makes the imperfection seems so perfect that you can't help but wanting some of it. You can't help but wanting to be a woman that goes off on a rant on any kind of subject and just because she feels like it without being funny or sacarstic, you want to be the girl on the screen with the golden hair that is always messy, you want to be the girl that starts talking about different subjects at the same time and doesn't really finishes them.  You want to be her, the one that is a little bit overweight but can still be sexy even doing the most usual things you can think off, you want to be the woman that get mad for no apparent reason and you want to be that women that in the back of her mind is always, always doutbing herself but still she is capable of doing the most amazing thing in the end. 

And then you realize that you kind of are that imperfect perfect woman and that is ok. 

So, Julie Delpy is a genious actress, director and a women that gets women and that's rare.

P.S: When asked about the perfect way to wacth the sunset trilogy, she said : "Backwards. Why not?! Go back in time."

See? I told you, she's a genious.

Your TopCrusher,

Alex