Divided Hybrids:
An Analysis of Miguel Gomes’ Oeuvre
Francisco Vergueiro Martins Fontes 11689986
Date: 26/06/2018
Supervisor: Dr. Abraham Geil
Second Reader: Dr. Marie-Aude Baronian Media Studies: Film Studies
Table of Contents
Introduction
03
Chapter 1: Foundations - Shorts & The Face You Deserve
06
Chapter 2: Recognitions - Our Beloved Month of August
15
Chapter 3: Recollections - Tabu
24
Chapter 4: Dreams - Arabian Nights
33
Conclusion
45
Bibliography
47
Filmography
48
Introduction
Documentaries and fiction films have been intertwining since 1895, when we first saw moving images of workers leaving the Lumière factory. This hybridization of registers has been explored since the very start but, like most aspects of our day-to-day, it is an idea that is constantly evolving and reinventing itself. This reinvention of ideas can be compared to André Bazin’s belief that cinema was yet to be invented (Myth 17) - a statement that can still be considered true when analyzing the development and eventual reinvention of specific filmmaking methods. The essential difference is that, while Bazin believed cinema was trying to catch up to the myth of its total enactment - in order to eventually reach an end result - in this case cinema continues to be “invented” due to its openness for experimentation - one without an end. The Portuguese critic-turned-director Miguel Gomes is behind a body of work that is distinctive in how it shifts between documentary and narrative filmmaking techniques, helping with this slow “invention” of the seventh art through formal experimentation. Strongly, but not exclusively, due to his mixture of techniques, his oeuvre is also firmly linked to realism, keeping such theories relevant, and as contemporary as his own work. His movies should for such reasons, and many more, be analyzed and considered with care. With Miguel Gomes’ oeuvre as my case study, I intend to investigate how the somewhat paradoxical dualities presented in movies that hybridize the filmmaking methods often linked to fiction films to those linked to documentaries reinforce the realities of what they depict, using the theories of figures like Bazin and Kracauer regarding film realism as a basis for part of it. In order to reach an answer to this question, steps need to be taken to first understand how his collected directorial trademarks would place him within the spectrum of an auteur, how his use of non-actors actively link reality and fiction, what is the role of memory in the perception of reality, and how his evaluation of the current Portuguese socio-political situation creates documentaries out of fictions (and vice-versa).
In his short career, Gomes has produced a number of shorts and four features - The Face You
Deserve (2004), a fairytale-like story of a man who is coming to terms with reaching his 30s, Our Beloved Month of August (2008), a true hybrid that explores rural Portugal’s citizens and their traditions, Tabu
(2012), an homage to cinema’s silent era about infidelity and its consequences in a Portuguese colony in Africa, and Arabian Nights (2015), a six-hour triptych epic that humorously but poignantly comments on the Portuguese economic crisis. All of these will be analyzed with different purposes for this research, culminating in an overall understanding of the ideas behind his filmography which, collectively, results in a unique and thought-provoking oeuvre. Through a formalist analysis, where specific scenes and moments will be read in detail regarding either their editing, narrative, or production aspects, each one of Gomes’ features will help with an aspect of the answer to the main question regarding the connections of hybrid films and realism, and his overall contribution to film history through the perspective of a modern auteur.
In tracing the trajectory of his work, this thesis will construct a narrative that interweaves his evolution as a filmmaker and how different theories could be applied to read his oeuvre contextually. While my focus is not on Gomes’ role within a national cinema, I will at moments contextualize the history and position of Portuguese cinema within the global market, thus centralizing the environment in which he works without necessarily evaluating the way his surroundings influence his filmmaking in one way or another. Letting this side of it looser, I intend to free his filmography from such constraints and responsibilities. While his movies deal directly with the reality in Portugal, from its colonizing history in
Tabu, its traditions in Our Beloved Month of August, and its politics in Arabian Nights, I believe that
Gomes does not think of his work as bound to the country itself. Similarly, while I will consider the aspects that could label him as an auteur, my goal is not to bind his work within such a category. However, as I am analyzing his career in terms of recurring themes and techniques, it’s hard to escape this dimension of it. Gomes himself is a great believer in the interaction of the audience with his movies, always constructing them in ways that give the spectator more freedom to comprehend them in their own ways, getting what they find valuable, and so creating a series of different understandings. If he goes as far as giving his audience such freedom, it would be unfair to systematically pinpoint his career. While my analysis will reach a final conclusion, I hope such conclusion to be fluid, and only one within many that could be gathered from a theoretic and analytical understanding of an oeuvre. While I am confident that such a research could lead to revelatory findings that could hopefully present the work of Miguel Gomes to a larger audience, my main goal is to elucidate his formal inventiveness as a director working in the industry today, and not how he is one thing and one thing only. For such, steps need to takes to slowly understand his career, as described below.
Chapter One will focus on the start of his career, and how slowly, through his short-movies, he built a repertoire of techniques and ideas that lead up to his first feature, The Face You Deserve. With that, I will consider how and to what extent he can be considered an auteur, guided by Dudley Andrew’s views on the position of the modern auteur today. Chapter Two will be an extended analysis of Gomes’ second feature, the one that put him on the map of world cinema. As Maya Deren suggests, realism in film requires “of its subject matter, only that it exist; and of the audience, only that they can see” (60). This specific concept, that makes no distinction between documentary and fictional truths is of particular use in my analysis of the impact of hybrids within the discussion of realism, particularly concerning Our Beloved
Month of August. Also instrumental for a reading of this particular title, but further applied at different
moments, will be Jacques Rancière’s considerations on the legacies of documentary and fiction filmmaking, particularly due to how he understands cinema as “the combination of the gaze of the artist who decides and the mechanical gaze that records, of constructed images and chance images” (161). Reading it through the lenses of Rancière, which in turn are discussed by Nico Baumbach, I will analyze how the film mixes fiction and documentary between and within its own divided structure.
As the discussion of realism in film is a long and diverse one, I intend to focus mainly on thoughts brought up by classical film theorists. André Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer find themselves among such a group, and will be the starting point of Chapter Three. Their opposing views concerning film realism, given Bazin’s belief that film was the closest men could get to finally satisfy their obsession with reality (Ontology 6), and Kracauer's description of the photographic image as a “jumble that consists partly of garbage” (Photography 426), will allow me to argue how Gomes is capable of juggling such ideas while keeping them at play in the present aesthetic, political, and historical moment. By comparing photographs with memory-images, Kracauer argues how the latter is more reliable, as it acts on the realms of space and time, much like the moving image. This argument will also be instrumental for my analysis of Tabu, given the way that it presents its second half as a stream of mnemonic consciousness. This title will be the focus of Chapter Three, and will be read through its exploration of recollections and memories, and how it inwardly speaks of realism with its characters and outwardly explores the history of film itself - ideas that I relate back to Kracauer, Bazin, and others who have dealt with realism in film - such as Maya Deren. To conclude, Chapter Four will focus on all three parts of Gomes’ latest, Arabian Nights. Olga Kourelou, Marina Liz, and Belén Vidal’s collective article on the impact of the European economic crisis on the artistic output of Portugal, Spain, and Greece will give a background to my understanding of this title, along with eventual comparisons to Portugal’s film production history. The trilogy will collectively be analyzed through its oneiric images and contrasting direct relation to the present political situation in Portugal, focusing on the way that the movie was conceived and produced - which took Gomes’ usual interplay of fiction and documentary all the way back to the film’s pre-production. On top of that, Bazin’s psychoanalysis of the visual arts’ will be used throughout the whole research, as his views on arts’ need to vanquish time can guide a whole reading of Tabu, and his understanding that film eliminated the distinction between the imaginary and the real is relevant for both Our Beloved Month of August and
Arabian Nights.
One could claim that Gomes is a realist filmmaker - but only when his work is looked at through the link between his unique use of hybridity and realism. With realism being man’s search for a true representation of the world, and hybrid filmmaking including a partially untouched re-presentation of what the camera sees through its documental approach, the two are linked and often inseparable. But while realism assumes a seamless unity to what it presents, Gomes creates a tension between the perceived hybridity of registers that sometimes remain divided within his films - in the way he shows his audience the seams that hold the two together. In his movies the line between the two is often clear - keeping the sense of reality strong. When looked at through this lens, his body of work opens up, revealing more than what is immediately explicit on screen. By analyzing Gomes’ entire oeuvre, I hope to show how the work of a director evolves, while keeping within the essence of each title the same ideas that helps to stitch a body of work together, keeping everything tight, connected, and with no fear to show its own stitchings.
Chapter 1: Foundations - Shorts & The Face You Deserve
From the very birth of film, people have tried to make sense of it theoretically, philosophically, and critically. While in most arts the realms of artists and critics seem to be mostly separated, within filmmaking there seems to be eventual overlaps. Film history has seen some of its most important directors and creators coming from the world of criticism. This transition has created the likes of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, Paul Schrader and Peter Bogdanovich, and more recently, Olivier Assayas and Miguel Gomes. The latter of those, the Portuguese director born in 1972 in Lisbon, has become one of the most important names in Portuguese cinema, and has with each new film brought a fresh take on how movies are conceived, produced and presented. Whether this is due to his background in film criticism or not, he helps to prove how there is still space for experimentation and exploration within filmmaking. At the same time, it is interesting to note how all the names cited above have at one point or another of their careers been called auteurs. The auteur theory, though often and systematically criticized since not long after its implementation on film critics and scholars’ vocabulary in 1954 as it “carried with it the aura of elitism” (Andrew 77), is still of relevance when analyzing the collected work of a director. In the case of Gomes, who is an example of a professional who is constantly bringing back themes and techniques from one movie to another, it is even harder to escape it.
In his evaluation of the place of the auteur theory today, Dudley Andrew says that “the auteur has outlasted the industry” (80). The theory, though never perfect, is equally still alive and requires some consideration. Andrew Sarris rightfully said that “auteurism was born out of a passion for polemics” (63), something that was immediately apparent through the academic “war” between himself - an avid supporter of the theory - and people like Pauline Kael and Graham Petrie. While Sarris defends that “auteurism was never meant to be an exclusionary doctrine nor a blank check for directors” (63), Petrie argues that it served mostly to “bolster the self-respect and boost the egos” of directors (29), and Kael believed that it “offers nothing but commercial goals to the young artist who may be trying to do something in film” (25), being in sum “an aesthetics which is fundamentally anti-art” (22). All in all, “it is not the auteur theory which gives cause for argument, but only the application of it” (Staples 5). While in this chapter I will point out to techniques used and developed by Gomes throughout his career that could place him in the realm of auteurs, my goal is not to position him in one place or another, or to further the seemingly never ending discussion of the place of the auteur theory in film criticism. My goal is merely to analyze how his signature techniques developed through his initial explorations in short filmmaking, and what lead to what. As very little has been written about his shorts and his overall early career, I think it is crucial to read these shorts as a gateway to his eventual signature style and as the birth of his techniques. Additionally, it is important to understand the environment in which such shorts were produced.
Portugal saw a big change in its cultural landscape during the 90s. With a new political and economical situation - given in great part to its inclusion in the European Union in 1986 - new funds were allocated and invested in public culture. The creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1995, and of privately owned TV stations around the same time, saw as a result a steady growth of content creation for both entertainment and advertising. That cultural economical situation gave rise to a new generation of filmmakers, entitled the “Shorts Generation”, given their work in the world of short-films. The directors that were part of this so-called generation were helped not only by the financial support provided by the government, but by an overall change in the distribution circuit, that gave space for the growing number of productions. New strategies included the “exhibition of short-films prior to feature films (a method that was eventually abandoned in the early 2000s); the proliferation of film festivals […] and finally, film-clubs, that regained an intense activity” (Ribas 92). With the means to produce, and the space to be seen, the Shorts Generation in Portugal gained enough power to reshape the landscape of its national cinema, with a number of them gaining recognition in foreign film festivals, resulting on a new interest in Portuguese cinema, today “one of the most important aesthetic focal points in the international film scene” (Fernández and Álvarez 40). Miguel Gomes was an early addition to this group of filmmakers, and like all of them, his notoriety came from his first few short-films. In his analysis of tendencies of contemporary Portuguese cinema, Daniel Ribas lists three main tendencies that can be analyzed separately: “(1) a fantasy cinema, with intense use of dialogue; (2) a cinema with realist propensities, where visuals have a strong importance and the use of dialogue is little; (3) and a poetic-hybrid cinema, where the visual dimension dominates, with minimal narrative and a creative use of sound” (92). Ribas lists Miguel Gomes as being part of the first group, but I intend to show how he could fit in all such divisions.
After graduating from the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema do Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, and working as a film critic in the Portuguese press for a few years, Gomes released his first short-film,
Meanwhile (1999). It’s telling how so early in his career some of the aspects he would later be known for
were already taking shape and presenting themselves - as is the case of the interplay between fiction and reality. Here in his first effort as a director - and
furthermore, in its very opening shot - we already get a taste of his interest on this hard-to-escape aspect of filmmaking, in the way he consciously addresses it. The film opens with a group of boys on a green field, getting ready to play a match of rugby. They stand in their positions like statues, not moving, but ready to do so at any minute (Fig. 1). A traveling shot, moving from left to right, gives
behind the one holding the ball. With the camera in its final resting position, and the framing set, the players finally begin their game (Fig. 2). This brief, simple and yet telling technique immediately positions Gomes as a director that is not after the true naturalism of the world captured by his camera, but in the place that lies in between the natural and unnatural. The way his characters wait for the camera to find the frame before acting - figuratively and literally, in both senses of the word - shows how they might be aware of the camera’s existence. They are enacting a game, acting out a script and following directions; but the documental feeling of it all, where the camera move seems to merely be registering a behind the scenes moment before action is called, is still implied. Gomes immediately sets what is perhaps the most important and most revelatory aspect of his entire oeuvre - the interplay of fiction and reality.
With that established, Gomes’ second short-film, Christmas Inventory (2000), can be seen as his first true mixture of genres. The opening credits label it as a “musical film”, an aspect of it that is not settled through songs sang by its characters, but by the music - both diegetic and non-diegetic - that accompanies the images. At the same time, it could be mistaken for a documentary, in the way the camera, static and distanced, captures the gathering of a family at Christmas like a fly on the wall. Observational, and unstuck from a conventional narrative, with moments that are clearly unaccounted for, it only reveals itself as fiction once the audience realizes it is set in the 80s - in itself a characteristic that is subtle, shown through the costumes and select props. In his synopsis, Gomes acknowledges the fact that there are many genres at play, and adds even more layers to it, mentioning how the film is “a fake documentary and a fake animation film, a semi-fiction about children that go to war, play music and take over” (Curtas Pt.). His use of the word ‘fake’ in
relation to the documentary and animated parts of it, and the word ‘semi’ in relation to its fictional part, is of interest here. One wonders if there is a difference, and if so, where the difference lies. If the film is semi-fictitious, we could assume its other part is semi-documental. And yet the choice to call it a ‘fake’ documentary raises questions that go further from the actual result of this particular film. Gomes hinted to his interest in the
Fig. 2: The game starts once the frame is set.
interplay between fiction and reality with his first short, and used his second one to solidify it. Be it fake or not, the documentary aspect of it is present, and recognizable until the very end - where we clearly hear the director call ‘cut’. A choice like that could be seen as an example of what Ribas calls “shooting accidents”, a resource used by Gomes where such accidents are incorporated into the main narrative, manipulating its verisimilitude (93). Many aspects are in play in this short, where even its title is brought to life, as the film inevitably becomes an actual inventory, in the way Gomes shoots close-ups of everything that is related to this particular Christmas dinner - the presents, the wrapping papers, the tree, and a vast and detailed nativity scene composed of various statuettes (Fig. 3, Fig. 4). Adding to this mixture the aspects of musicals described during the opening titles, and the ‘fake animation’ as described by Gomes in the synopsis, we are left with a huge amalgamation of genres - an idea that is further explored in most of his features.
Kalkitos (2002), commissioned by the Curtas Vila do Conde festival - where all of his previous
shorts had screened - showed yet another side of Gomes, one filled with an unusual humor, and brought with it another of his trademarks: an homage to silent films, that would gain full force in his third feature,
Tabu. Kalkitos is in part a musical film - more so than Christmas Inventory, that self-described itself as
such - but this quality of it gains an experimental edge by the way sound is edited. With loops and rewinds, the same song plays throughout the film, working non-diegetically, but playing the double role of the character’s voice. For the most part a silent film, the lyrics of the song double up as the sound coming out of the character’s mouths - which are then “translated” into title cards. While the dialogue is not comprised of the lyrics, the sound editing sometimes sinks the song to the (exaggerated pastiche) movement of the character’s mouths. Sound design would later become a crucial part of Gomes’ work, and here we can see the genesis of that aspect. It is not coincidental that Gomes himself is listed for the first time as the sound director in Kalkitos. With his fingerprint directly on the sound mixing and editing, the short’s surreal feeling is elevated, and becomes the main element of its final result. This film is an odd addition to his filmography, as it looks and feels cheaper than those that preceded it. But be this for the fact that it was a commissioned work or not, it still adds to Gomes’ repertoire of techniques that would evolve him as a filmmaker. After a couple more shorts, having found a style of his own, experimenting with genres and techniques, and after receiving various awards from short-film festivals around the world, Miguel Gomes was ready to make his first feature.
Fig. 4: Part of the vast nativity scene that is detailed throughout the film.
The Face You Deserve brought back some of the elements first explored in his shorts: the mixture
of genres, the play with musicals, the interconnections of fiction and reality, and a keen attention to sound design, among others. He was evolving, and working with what he had already presented as his interests. But with more space to play, Gomes could bring more to the table, and more so than anything else, this feature brought to the forefront what is surely one of his main trademarks - one that would be used in all of his following feature films: the division of the movie into parts, or chapters. This is, putting it simply, two films in one. The first part follows Francisco, an irritable man who is coming to terms with reaching his 30s, making his best to delay this reality - which translates mostly on his childish behavior. In the second part, Francisco is bedridden in a cabin in the woods, where seven of his close friends are supposed to make him feel better. During its second part, the films becomes something else altogether. A semi-retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with direct references to the Brothers Grimm’s fairy-tale - both visually and thematically - it contains a twisted humor and many rules, followed by the characters, and employed on its very script. In his director’s statement, Gomes mentions that it was “necessary to transform the film into a universe, to invent an inner logic with its own working rules, to restructure it like a dream” (Festival Scope Pro). That is precisely what is delivered - a film that falls somewhere between a reality and a dream, but that given its inner logic, never fails to convince its audience.
The film is in many ways an adult fairy tale. This idea, while fully explored in its second part, is presented right at the very start of the film, with its choice of images and motifs. The very first image we see, that of an opulent magic mirror seen between red curtains, reminds one immediately of Snow White, a theme that will be played on throughout the entirety of the film. Appropriately, the first part of the film is entitled “Theater”, and before it all starts, we hear the clapping of an (unseen) audience. This sound effect choice points to the fact that the movie is aware of its own fiction, conscious that it is creating something for an audience. As the film acknowledges its understanding of itself as a fiction, the audience is in turn reminded of that fact, and therefore takes everything that comes after that as what it truly is - a fairy tale. To further pinpoint this aspect of it, a phrase comes on screen: “Up to your 30’s you have the face God has given you. After that you get the face you
deserve.” This saying, that Gomes himself claims to be the originating idea for the film, works here as a moral to the story - the lesson that one is supposed to get, and that which gives the films its direction. From this very stylized and plastic opening shot, we are taken to an ordinary street in contemporary Lisbon, where the film gains its reality, if only momentarily. Francisco, the
outsider. That is given in the humorous way that he descends an ordinary street bus dressed from head to toe as a Cowboy - or the idealized image of a cowboy, as portrayed in Hollywood movies (Fig. 5). It is immediately clear that what he is wearing is a costume, and not his usual attire, but it all helps to position him as outside of reality - an unnatural element in the otherwise normal environment. He is out of place, not only physically, but psychologically, as we will understand later on.
This surreal feeling continues immediately after Francisco’s introduction. Every character that we see during the first few minutes is in costume, including his friend Marta, who picks him up from the bus stop dressed as a fairy. Once with him, she soon starts to sing. Gomes often identifies his short-films as musicals, but this time he goes even deeper on that idea, with characters singing their feelings and thoughts, much like the classical musicals of Hollywood’s Golden Era and beyond. The costumes worn by the characters at this point - the cowboy and the fairy - only intensify the dream-like quality that musicals often possess. Francisco, however, continues to stand in his own territory, as he refuses to take part of the musical act itself. While she sings, he talks. This distinction in actions furthers separates their own reality - isolating him - and the immediate mixture of genres - the drama and the musical - reflects back on how these characters are portrayed, as if each belonged to a different genre, or a different movie altogether. The interplay of genres hinted at is almost palpable. Constantly complaining, Francisco is clearly uncomfortable with the situation he finds himself, and wishes more than anything to change his present reality - escaping it. It is his 30th birthday, but he is forced to spend it at someone else’s party. Not only that, but a kid’s party. While still complaining, he nevertheless seems to take his being at a kid’s party full heartedly, in the way that he is clearly acting childish - jealous of other kids, challenging them, feeling superior. He tries to delay the reality of getting old as much as he can, even if it’s just through dialogue. When someone wishes him a happy birthday, he corrects them: “only at 6PM.” He wishes not to grow up, and it seems like the people around him understand that, in the way they treat him as a child - ironically or not. The first gift he gets from Marta is a huge plush alligator. Seemingly unsure of what to do with it, he is told to simply “play with it!” Small moments like these, along with the constant calls he receives from his mother, shows that maybe he is not coming to terms with the arrival of his 30s because those around him are also not ready to face the passing of time. Francisco, dressed as a cowboy, is still a kid - never to grow up.
The Face You Deserve marks the first collaboration between Miguel Gomes and the sound mixer/
director Vasco Pimentel, who would from that point on work on all of Gomes’ films. Vasco makes the sound in this film of particular interest, evolving the sound work that Gomes had started to develop in
Kalkitos, and bringing it to a more realized state. Here, diegetic and non-diegetic sounds become one, in
the way that effects are added to character’s actions, linking such “real” actions to the artificiality of the sound effects chosen. An example of such a device is heard at a moment still during the party where
Francisco pretends to shoot his (fake) gun. We immediately hear the sound effect of bullets flying and even ricocheting. The sounds here are not added for realist purposes - they are far from being foley - as they are extremely artificial. In turn, they create links between the reality of what we are seeing on screen to the imaginary world and actions in the characters’ minds. Additionally, the sound design and mixing is constantly used to emphasize small aspects of the environment created. We hear small details that are highlighted, thus gaining relevance, like the constant sound that the spurs in Francisco’s cowboy boots make. Mixed higher than other elements in every scene he is present, the spurs are given the role of a tracker, always pinpointing his location on and off screen. Surrounded by sound, a reality that never leaves, the characters and their interactions become grounded and genuine.
It’s finally night, and Francisco has reached his 30s. Alone in his apartment, he eventually gives in to the reality of the situation and - in a sign that he is ready to become someone else, someone closer to who his friend Marta already is - he breaks into his own song. Later however, on his way to the house in the woods where the second half of the film will take place, we hear Marta sing another song, one where Francisco’s life, and his state of being is explained through lyrics. At the mention of his sickness, he starts to sneeze and cough - almost as an allergic reaction to the lyrics, the song itself, or to his new reality. Having reached his 30s, he might be “getting the face he deserves”, as we see when he wakes up with measles’ skin rash all over his face, in what is the start of the films’ second part, “Measles”. We are told by Francisco himself, who becomes a narrator, that he is sick and that he needs the help of his friends (seven of them) to make him feel better. Each friend is then introduced by the way of children books’ illustrations, that name and give them each a trait that defines their personality - a simplification that has its similarities to the seven dwarfs in Snow
White (Fig. 6). Much like the adult-kids from Kalkitos, the seven friends who are responsible to
take care of him behave like kids, probably understanding themselves as such. Spending the day playing childish games (hide and seek, catch), and living a life governed by childish rules imposed on them by Francisco, the reality of their age becomes irrelevant. In this house, away from most responsibilities, they can behave as they wish, as long as rules are followed. Alone, it seems that their over-imposing wish is to remain innocent, childish, and free. Their child-like behavior, one that gives strength to their beliefs - the tooth fairy for one - is never contested. Here, even the rules they need to follow - their only responsibility - are childish, like the “most important” one, as described by Francisco in
his narration: their strict bedtime. An idea that is so relevant in childhood, before dissipating in adulthood, is brought back - keeping their kid’s spirit alive and well.
As this is Gomes’ first use of his divided storytelling technique, where the film is divided in parts or chapters, he tries it in different ways. Besides clearly demarcating each part by naming it, we can see such divisions in the stories within stories that permeate the movie, especially at a long sequence at the end. One of the characters starts to tell a story that branches out into yet different ones that we see take shape on screen. This tale of tales mixes itself with the main storyline - as it features the same characters we have been following - and can in this way be confusing at first, as another character listening to it points out. For that he is told: “You need patience to listen to a story. The middle is the important part, not only the beginning and the end.” This could be directed at the audience itself, who in like many of Gomes’ films is invited to actively participate in the storytelling by keeping close attention to what is being presented, joining parts of the story by themselves and giving sense to what is not necessarily explicitly shown or told on screen. This method of storytelling, one that does not rely on the conventional structure of a beginning, middle, and end, is employed here to bring the spectator closer to the action. Ribas calls this a “cinephilic game, that reclaims a dialectic relationship between the director and the spectator” (94). This “game” is one that will be employed in all of Gomes’ future features, and that is present mostly due to the way his films are divided in parts, allowing the viewer to participate at a higher level.
The house where the characters find themselves during this second part of the film contains many mysteries. One of them is a dark, forbidden room where the characters cannot enter. At the end, this very room is revealed as the pathway to a different reality. Whether that is the reason it is forbidden or not, it shows how these characters are not to escape their present reality - one which is set on them. Rules are not to be broken, and the norm established is supposed to be followed, even if the “norm” might be so different than what an audience expects from a movie. The one character that actively escapes his initial reality within the film is Francisco. Set at the start of the film as being its protagonist, he “disappears” completely during its second half. While we know where he is, he is not to be seen again, and the other characters are not even allowed to say his name aloud. This is Francisco’s way to escape his own reality - one where he is getting older, reaching his 30s, and getting the face he deserves. During the second half, as he is in control of the rules that his friends are supposed to follow, he shift states in the narrative - from character to omniscient narrator. With this “power”, he is capable to control the characters to some extent, delineating their actions by the rules he establishes. At moments during his narration it is clear that he is aware of what the characters are thinking, and as he directly reacts to some of their actions, it is also evident that he is watching them, much like the audience is. This God-like quality that he obtains reflects back on the methods of storytelling that differ between the two parts of the film. In the first part he is a mere character, with his weaknesses and troubles. By becoming the narrator in the
second half, he becomes something more, as if his power acts outside of the realm of the film on screen and onto the exterior realm - that of the script. At moments, the characters seem to hear Francisco’s narration, following his directions. The interconnection and interplay within the seen and the unseen, the physical and the bodiless is given full strength at moments like these. Two plains of reality interact, as if Francisco, by leaving the screen, becomes a metaphorical screenwriter, taking control of the film. This physical move between reality and fiction, as portrayed by the characters, is put into contrast to Gomes’ own juggling of the real and the fictitious. While this film in in no ways documentary, as all of his following films are, the fact that he writes characters who are trying to, within their own fictional reality, escape such reality, says something of what was to come from the director.
With each of his short-films, Gomes established his own cinematic interests - visually and narratively. There are aspects seen in some of them that would come into play later in his career, but The
Face You Deserve seems like the perfect start to set his career as a feature director going. It not only
employs some of the ideas he had explored in his shorts - this time with ample room - but brings new ones that render the film a true beginning of his career. The Face You Deserve might be a great example if one was to follow Ribas’ denomination of the three tendencies of Portuguese cinema mentioned earlier, but the fact is that Gomes’ work could be placed at each and every one of those sub-divided tendencies - as his films are filled with fantasy, realist propensities, and a poetic hybrid where the visuals dominate. Ribas’ argument, one that delineates a structure within Portuguese cinema, brings back to mind the idea of auteurs, this time applied to the context of a national cinema. As Gomes is both within the context of a national cinema, and arguably an auteur himself, it is of particular interest to see how these two circles can overlap and intermingle. If the classic auteurs are those who fit within a specific genre, Gomes could be described as an auteur who works within the realm of hybrids, always in between fiction and reality. As I will explore in the following chapters, Gomes follows his first feature with three films that are as different in their production methods and presentation as they are paradoxically similar in their ideas and tendencies.
Chapter 2: Recognitions - Our Beloved Month of August
Much like “the image of the painter before an empty canvas” (Andrew 83), Miguel Gomes sits in front of his producer in a lateral, medium two-shot (Fig. 7). His presence in his own movie “retains the lure of pre-linguistic purity, the moment when representation and perception interact in ways that are potentially fresh” (Andrew 83). Discussing the
casting for a movie he is attempting to make - the very one we are watching - he says, “I want people, not actors.” This simple and direct statement shows the confidence of a director who has a vision and who does not doubt his intuition. It is the sort of decision that can change the whole spirit of a movie, more often than not giving a different weight that grounds it in reality. In this case, it is surely a decision that was made in the early stages of pre-production, but Gomes decides
to incorporate it within the “plot” of the movie itself. Played in the midst of its narrative, it is as if he is finding the way to tell the story as he goes along, hand in hand with the audience - at the same speed.
Our Beloved Month of August, Gomes’ second feature - and the one that put him on the map of
contemporary directors that should be looked at closely - takes its audience along the process of finding a story and constructing a film. It is a movie about filmmaking as much as it is a documentary on small villages in Portugal and the story of a family who runs their own traveling band. Many things at once, it never loses touch with what it intends to do, but it requires of its audience a higher level of attention, so that no detail is missed, and so that they can put the pieces together. Gomes and his team lay out the pieces of the puzzle, but without the audience’s own gaze the pieces could seem to be merely spread out - not connecting. It needs its audience to recognize it. That is the strength of a movie that knows how to present itself with no fear of being misleading. In order to fully understand it, I will use as a reference Rancière’s Documentary Fiction (2006), reading the film through the author’s understanding of the blurring between documentary and fiction filmmaking.
Our Beloved Month of August is not precisely a diptych, given the way its two distinct parts are
constantly overlapping, but it still holds two parts. Its first half, the documentary part of it, focus on Gomes and his crew. They have set out with the intentions of shooting a script in the rural region of Arganil, in Portugal, but due to lack of funds are unable to do so. Not to waste their time and energy, they start to shoot everything they see that interests them. The region and its citizens, their stories, and the music that drives them. The month of August in Portugal is a time for celebration, and the crew records the many Fig. 7: Miguel Gomes and his “producer” in scene.
parties they encounter and the bands that entertain them. The second part of the film, the scripted one, turns its focus on a specific band, and the family that compose it - Tânia, her father Domingos, and her cousin Hélder - who is visiting from the big city. Soon, the two cousins get enamored with each other, bringing to the surface issues of trust, love and family relationships. The film, playing with both registers of fiction and documentary, is also interchangeable.
There are many ways in which this movie could be described, and many genres where it could be placed. To say that it is a documentary would not suffice. To say that it is a fictional drama would not be true. To simply say that it is a hybrid would be an oversimplification. In their introduction to the book
Docufictions: Essays on the Intersection of Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking (2006), John Springer
and Gary Rhodes create a diagram that exemplifies the four main results achieved when combining documentary and fictional forms and contents. They list them as: documentary, mockumentary, docudrama, and fiction (4). Our Beloved Month of August accomplishes the feat of being all of these at once. The interconnection of documentary form and content with fictional form and content in every direction is what makes it stand out. It is with this movie that Gomes proves to be one of the most innovative and exciting directors of his generation - not because he is inventing a new form, but because he is revitalizing it - giving new shape to cinema itself. In order to understand the way in which this is done, I will analyze its use of non-actors, the ideas behind its hybridization of registers, and the effects that this combination generates.
Beyond the representation of the real world through images that belong to it, the one element that links reality and fiction in any movie is the body of the actor. Instantly recognizable as a mirror of ourselves, the actor links the character they are portraying to the reality of the story - be it real or not - and immediately links the two aspects of the film world - that which is being represented, and that which is being re-presented. This link goes further when directors decide to use “regular” people to portray scripted characters. People that are not trained in acting, and have no previous experience in the art form. These non-actors represent all of us. While the strength of a movie and its success might rely on how convincing the performances of actors on screen are, non-actors, when used correctly, bring to the screen a quality that not even the most experienced actors can - a different authenticity that is fresh for most audiences. The history of film is filled with examples of the use of non-actors, ranging from those that are portraying themselves, or versions of themselves, to those that embody characters much like a professionally trained actor would.
The choice to use non professional or amateur actors in movies can add traces of documented realities to its DNA, and that is precisely what happens here. This movie, being to some extent about the work behind filmmaking, also includes Miguel Gomes himself and the rest of his crew as actors. Acting as
themselves, performing the roles they would be doing behind the camera, they become the subject for a few select scenes that set the tone and idea behind the development of the plot. During its second half, the same choice is followed, with non professional actors selected from the region where the movie is set playing the scripted characters. This choice give the overall feeling of authenticity that professional actors achieve only at a very different level, and the inclusion of the crew as characters reinforce the documentary aspects of the film. If Gomes had decided to cast professional actors for the fictional part of the film, a concrete barrier between its two halves would be established and the movie would lose aspects of the link that holds those halves together. While the audience is told that part of what we are seeing on screen is scripted, the somewhat lack of distinction between such parts - provided partially by its use of non-actors - is an aspect of the film that helps it to be so distinguishable.
The movie has moments of fiction that are played as reality, and moments of reality that are played as fiction. This shared DNA helps it to become both a documentary and a fiction film, not only in between its combined parts, but simultaneously. With this is mind, we can look at Rancière’s arguments that fiction and documentaries are not as distinguishable, given the fact that documentaries are “a mode of fiction at once more homogenous and more complex” (159). Our Beloved Month of August is proof that the cyclical back-and-fourths that it presents can result in a new form of storytelling. One does not need to know the true nature of the images, as once on screen everything becomes real and with the same level of recognition. The constant overlapping of genres and methods opens the film “onto multiple paths and create a virtual space of indefinite connections and resonances” (Rancière 167). It could be argued that the very act of creating a documentary and a fiction film simultaneously would be enough to pave its way into a realm of indistinguishability, but the film also makes use of its technical and narrative structure to further play with that idea. Throughout the entirety of the film, Gomes uses blending techniques that not only becomes the driving thread between scenes, and between the two distinct parts of the movie, but ends up being a metaphor for what he is trying to create with it. One of the most important of such techniques is the overlapping of sound from one scene onto another.
The disconnected sound and image become one through editing - separate, but still one and the same. I’d like to argue that that this overlapping of sound reflects back on the overlapping of filmmaking methods, gaining extreme significance to the meaning of the film. Through its use of sound, what might not seem natural has to be understood as so, by its very existence and presentation. Gomes seems to verify this idea with an extended joke that makes up a sort of epilogue for the film. After the end of the proposed fictional narrative, we return our gaze to the crew itself - most importantly the sound mixer, who we have seen throughout the film, capturing sounds in a forest. Miguel Gomes approaches him with an issue that has been found with sound while the review of dailies. As he explains, sounds that were not supposed to be there are showing up in random scenes. The issue presented seems to point out that the
sound overlaps that we hear throughout the film are not editorial choices, but “phantom sounds” that intermingled somehow with the images. The mixing of elements from one scene to the other is described as accidental and uncontrolled. Vasco, the sound mixer, explains that such a thing is not technically possible, and yet still possible. Much like the mixture of genres, they are “two figures so close together, and yet so radically opposed” (Rancière 170) that their union ends up working. As a final punch to the joke, Gomes complains that there are no songs in the mountains. At that very moment a song starts to play, diegetically, for all the “characters” on scene to hear. With this epilogue, Gomes recognizes this altering of reality - and the altogether links between fiction and reality - to be not only natural, but unavoidable.
When reading this film with Rancière’s text in mind, it is also helpful to look at Nico Baumbach’s analysis of the same. In it he points out that, for Rancière, documentary is “a locus for experimenting with and creating contestation over the common” (59). Our Beloved Month of August seems to be the perfect case study to prove such a point. Gomes is constantly experimenting with the narrative, bringing fresh results to what the audience might understand as a documentary. If looked at solely as a documentary, the film would still remain a mixture of styles, as one could argue that there are many types of documentaries being intertwined in its production and presentation. At moments it resembles observational, fly-on-the-wall documentaries - keeping its distance and letting events unfold. We see different people on their day-to-day lives, working, entertaining themselves and others, giving us an overview of the lives and communities of these small villages. At other times we can see aspects of expository documentaries, in the way it features direct, talking head interviews, giving us further information on the backstory of the characters and, from their stories, a broader understanding of the region and their culture. Here, the “narration” so common to that type of filmmaking is not necessarily one of omniscience, but remains an exterior voice given the way sound is overlaid. And, as mentioned before, the film could be described as a participatory or reflexive documentary, focusing not only on the interaction of the filmmaker and his crew with the subjects, but on the making of the film itself. Even formally, the change from a static, observational camera, to a more fluid, handheld one, changes its feeling drastically.
This mixture, one that helps the film be may things at once - while remaining unique - helps to set the mood of an ever-turning wheel that could take us anywhere. The strength of the film lies heavily on its unpredictability. Even when perceived as an ordinary documentary on a specific region of Portugal and the people and customs that shapes it, the audience is not prepared for its shifts in both style and content. During one specific interview, a character mentions that it’s easy to lose “the knowledge of knowing or not knowing.” Independent of what he was referring to at the time, it feels like this is addressed directly at the audience, who throughout the film - from the beginning to its very end - is
unsure of what they are seeing, what is true and what isn’t, who are actors and who are not, what is scripted and what is real life. Even when dealing with the fictional aspects of the film, this doubt is one that is completely different from the one Springer and Rhodes describe concerning mockumentaries. They explain that for an audience to fully comprehend and enjoy such films, they need to recognize “that the standard conventions of documentary film are being placed in the service of a satirical or ironic examination of a fictional subject” (5). But that is not what this film is attempting to do. Even when what is being documented is not factual, Gomes is not trying to emulate a documentary. It remains one. Be the facts true or false, exaggerated or controlled, all other aspects of his filmmaking point to an authentic approach to what is being shot. That is why it’s a movie that truly falls outside of the standard understanding of hybrid filmmaking.
The first time we see the crew, documented in what is presented as reality, they are preparing what is later explained to be the opening credits for the film - a complicated and extensive line of dominos. The producer, looking for Miguel, accidentally knocks the dominos over, destroying the effort of the crew. While still part of the documentary half of the movie, the way this scene is shot and edited paradoxically points to an organized and premeditated shoot. We see the dominos falling from different angles, following their initial purpose - even if performed at the wrong moment. The staging of the scene is clearly visible, as an abrupt event such as the one portrayed could not have been recorded as we have just seen it happen. The opposition of filmmaking style to that of content disturbs the understanding of this sequence as documental. At moments such as this, where the fiction presented as reality is recognized, the “mockumentary” aspect of the film becomes immediately visible. Gomes is fictionalizing the interactions between him and his producer, as if they were captured in real time - but his filmmaking choices point in another direction. Slowly, the making of the movie and its own structure and narrative begin to take over the day-to-day life of the crew, intermingling ordinary life and the life on set. That is most noticeable in a quick but significant moment where we see an assortment of film equipment being used as everyday objects, serving different purposes other than those they are originally intended to - like the clothes that are seen drying on top of light flags (Fig. 8). Much like the crew that serves as actors, the equipment serves different purposes - linked to the everyday, as opposed to their official, professional use. The mixing of reality and fiction seen in small details like these shows how one works in favor of the other - reality helping fiction, and vice-versa. The interchangeability of purposes, as the interchangeability of registers is normalized, being from that moment onwards the true reality. Fig. 8: The film equipment gains a different purpose.
Other moments help to point out to the ever present clash of truth and fiction - perceived reality and its opposite - as when a cut takes us from a kid’s drawing of a fire truck, to an actual functioning fire truck. The change of states between fiction and reality is so hard to capture that an immediate cut take us from one realm to the other. It is not as if this change of states is literal, but it remains inevitable. The song that we hear at this precise moment talks about the dreams of boys in childhood. The abrupt cut from the drawing of the truck to its physical reality seem to say that the dreams we had, and will come to have, can always be manifested in reality. The same principle, acted out in a very different form, can be perceived at a later scene. Two character reenact the hunting of a boar. The reenactment is further fictionalized and abstracted by the way Gomes decides to shoot the scene. He point his camera not at the men acting out their own reality, but to the shadows they project onto a wall of shrubs (Fig. 9). The intertextual connections between this moment and Plato’s allegory of the cave are inevitable. Much like the characters in Plato’s tale perceived the shadows as being reality, we as an audience are presented with the reality of these shadows. Later, as if to free the viewers from “the cave”, we see an actual boar that has been hunted down being killed and skinned.
While this scene does not immediately follow the shadow-play scene, the fact that we have not seen this boar being killed on camera makes us believe that the fiction portrayed by the two men and their shadows manifested itself into reality. While the dead boar is real, the imaginative hunt is what lead to his death. Once more, we see how “montage can play on two inverse functions: the real becoming art and art becoming the real.” (Baumbach 67).
The narrative starts to slowly materialize as the movie progresses. At an earlier scene Gomes is seen promising his producer that he will find the people that will come to act in his movie. What we see happen is in turn a reversal of that - the people themselves going after the crew, interested in taking part of the movie. This particular scene is another that could be labeled as a “mockumentary”, given the fact that the two girls we see approaching the crew to inquire about the film had already been cast in real life, and in very different circumstances. The depiction of this moment, fictionalized and presented as documented reality, shows them trying their best to get the crew to recognize their wish to take part of the movie. While the crew plays a game between themselves, the two girls move from one member to the other, inquiring who is responsible for casting. The crew in turn sends them around, as if trying to get away from the responsibility of casting the actors and finally putting a start to the production of the actual movie that they are there to shoot. Eventually they reach Miguel, who says the positions are filled. Fig. 9: Shadows remind the viewers
Determined, one girl - who does become the protagonist in the second part of the movie - suggests that the decision could be settled through a bet, and joins the game they are playing. The way the scene presents the casting of the films eventual protagonist as a result of chance and fate leads the viewer to believe that the only boundaries in the film are those established by the script and its characters. Before the start of the narrative, anything can be anything. Documentaries are usually caught in the “imperialism of the voice of the master” (Rancière 168), but here it is disconnected from such a voice, and in turn allowed to flow freely. Little by little the perceived documentary and the perceived narrative start to intertwine with each other. We first see people as they truly are and live, before finally seeing them as their respective characters.
Around the film’s halfway mark the narrative of the scripted characters begin to take shape and gain control of the film. The change of perspective that leads from one part to the next is manifested as if there was a literal change of lens. We see a shot where the camera’s own matte box is seen being put back into place (Fig. 10). This choice not only introduces the concept that the film we are watching is now a fiction, but paradoxically shows that behind the camera, reality is still active. The film and its very production are interlinked, never to separate. Truth and fiction, hand in hand, are what drive the story forward, for it is what creates the story. Here, the actual hand of the cinematographer is seen, and with a new filter in place, even the color temperature changes, filtering the reality that is positioned between the camera and the audience, between the physical plain of the landscape and the physical plain of the 16mm film. It is perhaps the most telling moment of the film, as it acts as the one true bridge between the division of this hybrid movie, linking them and making them one. Baumbach says that “documentary is taken to be a genre that even at its most shocking or spectacular tends to owe its pleasures to its ‘content’” (61). A moment like this, so connected to a technical choice, can be used to question this presumption.
For Rancière, the real difference between documentaries and fiction films is not in the type of images they work with with, but the way the images are treated. Meaning the content plays a smaller part. In his understanding, documentaries do not treat the real “as an effect to be produced” but rather as a “a fact to be understood” (158). In a hybrid film like Our Beloved Month of August, where the two realities - be they opposed or not - are composed of the same images, Rancière point is of extreme value for the understanding of what it tries to propose. Within the documental part of it, or its scripted reality, the
audience is supposed to understand it as fact, not merely an effect. The blending of genres allows for both to act in the same form, as the same inseparable entity. It does not matter that part of it is scripted, fictionalized and acted out, as the results obtained through this form of filmmaking are fundamentally the same as those obtained by the portion of the film that is recording actions as they happen. The reality of one and the other - transcribed into images - is indistinguishable. Or reversible.
Much like the film’s own form, the characters presented in it are fluid - moving from one state to the next and from one reality to another with ease. That is seen not only on the main protagonists - who we first meet as their “true selves” in the context of the documentary, and then later as the scripted characters - but in smaller aspects as well. From the use of karaoke (the emulation of a skill that is not necessarily yours), to the development of scenes and the way things are shot. At a specific moment, Hélder and Tânia are helping their friend write a love letter. This collective activity, with ideas being thrown back and forth aloud, swiftly change from one moment to the next in the way their suggestions to what their friend should write becomes self referential and directed at each other. Almost instantaneously, the words that were meant for others are now mean for themselves. It’s a smart moment that serves the purpose of solidifying the incestual interest between the two cousins, but that connects back to the form of the film and its shifts in tones, perspectives, and methods.
This fluidity of ideas and identities can be further seen on the other hinted incestual relationship of the movie - that between Tânia and her father. While never confirmed, different scenes make the audience suspect - through other characters’ suspicions - their relationship. This not only allude to the turbid relationship between Tânia and her mother (who has run away with a lover (or was abducted by aliens)) in an emotional level, but a physical one as well. At different moments we are told how much alike she and her mother are - even to the point of an uncle (drunkenly) confusing the two. The shape-shifting form of people, from non-actor to character, and one character to another, is instrumental to the development of the film’s narrative and structure. Later, during an extreme long shot that captures one of the parties, the frame includes at the bottom left corner another of the cameramen, who eventually abandons his post to go dancing with the crowd. Captured on film, and therefore thrown back into its narrative, the cameraman immediately takes the opportunity to act as the rest of those on screen, fully grasping his new reality - that of character. Rancière argues that “[f]iction means using the means of art to construct a “system” of represented actions” (158). The actions described here are used to create such systems - those that further the genre fluid nature of the film through narrative choices.
Important to its development is also the manifestation of truth in its physical form. As anything can be understood as true when seen on screen, Gomes pushes that idea further, confirming the “true nature” of some aspects of the story formally. This technique is used mostly during the fiction part of the film - as
when Tânia, about to conceal her lovemaking, decides to leave proof of it behind, so that her father can see, and so that the act itself becomes real. Without proof, the act could remain fiction - only true within the memory of the characters. Her father’s knowledge of her lovemaking with her cousin makes the whole action true to life, as it now involves a “witness”. The same can be said of the fact that Hélder’s heroic act during a forest fire is printed in the village’s newspaper for all to see. It makes his actions real, concrete. During an even subtler moment at the end of the movie, Gomes decides to shoot the trees in a forest by framing not only their bodies, but the small plaques that specify their scientific name and species (Fig. 11). Confirmed by them, the trees become real trees, in this moment that mixes the reality of the wind on their leaves with the actual reality of their scientific properties. It’s a small detail that sums up the whole idea of the film: everything can be two things at once. Decisions such as these, minute and yet heavy with significance, shows the confidence Gomes has on
his work, where he is constantly exploring “the tension between the idea of the image and imaged matter” (Rancière 170). At the very end, the crew is introduced and credited one by one. Their name and professional position is given, much like the trees right before them. Giving each function a face and a name makes them real - in turn making the movie real, and the moviemaking experience true to life.
Cinema, as an art, “seems almost to have been designed for the metamorphoses of signifying forms” (Rancière 165). Rancière’s use of the word metamorphoses is of extreme relevance here, as he is acknowledging the abrupt changes that can - and do - happen in film. The metamorphoses seen in Gomes’ second feature goes both ways, as it abruptly changes states in waves - becoming and unbecoming something else, something more. If cinema was truly designed this way, Gomes is making use of one of its intrinsic qualities and putting it to the test. The cyclical changes that the film goes through from one state to the other, and back again, could be seen as his way to test its limits. The perceived success of this experiment might vary from one spectator to the next, but I do believe that what is achieved is undeniable proof that documentary and fiction can work together with no need to distinguish them. It takes a certain level of background knowledge to truly know what in its structure belongs to one medium and what belongs to the other. As this knowledge is not one that the audience possess, the point of it is exactly to keep wondering, trying to recognize in its actors, narrative, and structure, the traces of reality that are innate to a film like this. Our Beloved Month of August proves the metamorphosis quality inherent to filmmaking by pointing to a further quality it can possess - its amalgamation of styles.
Chapter 3: Recollections - Tabu
Documentaries and fictions are registers that play with the representation of reality, and the demarcations between reality and non-reality. As Gomes is constantly mixing such registers, he ultimately brings his work to the question of realism in film, and the demarcation of what is real and what isn’t. The reproduction of real life is arguably one of art’s most sought after results since antiquity. As André Bazin argues, artists were always looking for ways to embalm time (Ontology 8) - preserving it for the future - and “cinema satisfied once and for all […] the obsession with realism” (Ontology 6). But this act of embalming, of preserving, serves an even larger purpose - that of remembering. We try to capture reality, be it by freezing time on paintings, sculptures, and photographs, or by recording it with moving images - fictional or documentary - not to forget the moments and elements of the natural world that make life what it is. With that in mind, Siegfried Kracauer is not wrong to so intently discuss the differences between a photograph and our memory-images, as memories can in this way be understood as the true goal of all arts. Even “full of gaps” (Photography 425) and being easily manipulated, memories are the most complete method of preserving time - for not only they preserve its sensorial realm, but all the emotional feelings connected to it. Rancièce sees in memory a reflection of the work documentary plays on filmmaking, saying cinema itself was “designed for the metamorphoses of signifying forms that make it possible to construct memory” (165). Just as Gomes’ movies lie somewhere between fiction and documentary, film falls somewhere in between the realms of representation and remembering, of spatial and time conformities - servicing both worlds and bringing results unachievable in other arts. How would a movie concerning human memory add to the discussion of reality in film? And how would that same discussion change the way such a movie could be interpreted? Miguel Gomes’ Tabu is such a movie, and I intend to show how its themes and overall conception are in constant dialogue with questions of the representation of reality, the understanding of memories, and the axis where these two meet.
Tabu concerns itself not only with the memory of its characters, but with the memory of film
history itself, serving both as an homage and a reflection on how we comprehend the medium. These two levels, the conceptualized and the meta, work hand in hand in the way the movie is constructed. As I intend to go back and forth within its narrative during my analysis, it is helpful to establish how the movie is divided, and its overall narrative. A diptych, it tells the story of Aurora, her illicit love affair, and the calamitous consequences of her actions. The first part, entitled “Paradise Lost”, is set in contemporary Lisbon, and presents Aurora as a supporting character, somehow forgotten from her own story. It focus instead on Pilar, a middle aged woman who on the last days of the year start to get involved too closely to the problems or her neighbor - Aurora - an old woman slowly falling towards dementia, whose understanding of reality, memories, and imagination are in constant shift. The second part, “Paradise”, goes back in time to Aurora’s youth, and her days living in the Portuguese colony of an unnamed (and
