I'm Portuguese, but very ceptic about our cinema.
I had this big wrong idea about Oliveira's movies and I was completley mistaken. He is awesome.
Leonor Silveira looks stunning and the landscapes are beautiful.
I recommend it, but only if you can appreciate long movies because the integral version is 210 minutes long.
It is dazzling. It's a great, great film. And I saw the original version at a de Oliveira retrospective last year.
And I also met Manoel himself! He opened the retrospective with his (then) latest film, Christopher Columbus, The Enigma.
First time I watched this was at the movie theatre, just me and my two friends in the room. I liked it, the sceneries are breathtaking and Leonor's a great actress. Like all de Oliveira's movies, it drags too slowly but I was interested enough in the story to keep watching without feeling too bored. My two friends fell asleep, literally.
Some time later watched it again on tv, I guess I wasn't paying too much attention, was probably doing something else at the same time. Still thought it was an ok movie, scenery still grabbing hold of my attention from time to time.
And then, I watched it again. This time I already knew the story well, the scenery wasn't distracting me anymore, so I paid close attention to the dialogues, and you know what? I hated it! They're so pretentious, so filled with what we call "cheap philosophy" (basically, it's when you state something like it's of a deep philosophical meaning but in fact it's just something everyone knows or so easy to understand it can't really be thought of as philosophy at all), it becomes unbearably annoying.
So, my advice, give it a try, it's worth it. But not of a second or a third.
"boring", "pretentious" and "cheap philosohpy" are precisely the words that come to my mind when watching Oliveira's movies. Also there are usually many flaws with the acting and the script. The cinematography is good, sometimes (as in this movie) great, but it's certainly not enough to consider Oliveira as more than an average director.
My advice is the same: give it a try. But I add: don't feel compelled to say you like it just because your posh friends will look down on you otherwise.
Astounding to me to think that anyone would consider Oliveira to be "cheap philosophy". What isn't then? A collection of Deleuze lectures? Obviously his work isn't aspiring to be academic philosophy but rather lyric philosophy and that makes all the difference. Denigrating it for what it is and does (especially in a movie like this, a masterpiece of that form) just seems to utterly miss the point, as with those who take the same approach to Terrence Malick. Calling it "pretentious" is also an almost meaningless critique as it's the easiest, broad brush dismissal in the world. At this point all that seems to mean is that you recognize that the film aspires to art or is artful and you don't like it, for whatever reason. "Boring" I can accept and more readily understand; if it bored you or didn't engage you, well, there's no real remedy for that.
The acting in Oliveira's films is hard to fault as far as I'm concerned but again if you're not engaged with it and what it's doing I can see why you would find fault with it. But conventional standards don't apply here with such stylized performances, so consistently maintained throughout his body of work (with varying degrees of rigid severity--his last films and his earliest ones seem less so to me). In other words it's a performance style derived from an artistic choice--you may not like that style but you're not obliged to. And of course much of the language you take issue with here is directly from the source Agustina Bessa-Luís text, so you'd have to fault Agustina as well. Considering how many of Oliveira's films are almost literal text adaptations of Portuguese authors like Camilo Castelo Branco, Eça de Queiroz and José Regio you'd have to also find grave fault or inadequacy with them too (not to mention a French one like Paul Claudel). Actually, Oliveira seems more properly placed within the cultural continuity of his society than his detractors do; a broad and sweeping dismissal of his work then risks being one of much Portuguese culture too. From what I understand, Oliveira's films do seem to play less well with native Portuguese viewers than with others. Is that the case here? If so I wonder why that is, though it's hardly an uncommon situation (the films of Angelopoulos, for instance, never seemed to find as enthusiastic a reception in his native Greece as elsewhere).
Dazzling indeed.
It's a film of great emotion and melancholy, and yet Oliveira wisely creates a barrier between the audience and the often melodramatic events taking place on screen. In a way it's a study of male-female relationships, and the dangers of all consuming desire, as well as an analysis of how no human can ever be romantically or sexually satisfied. The images are akin to beautiful paintings.
I actually grew up in that place, and I remember the cast and crew over there on my city, the one that you see at the beginning of the movie with a shot from a higher place, and had also been in Abraham Valley after the big fire that happened some time after the movie was done. Great imponent place still, and despite the name of the movie, it doesn't really covers the House of the Abraham Valley and it's grounds which are really gorgeous specially the Gardens with Tree species brought out from all over the world.
Even though with this backstory I only ended watching the film now after 20 years. Portuguese cinema is also absurdly hard to find inside of Portugal and rarely has the attention of Television.
Anyway, the movie does have a raw quality which is extraordinary and adds a lot with the aid of the Scenary as other users have mentioned, the cast is pretty good, too theatrical and poetic if I might add.
My only issue it was really the characterization o Emma. Silveira lines didn't sounded very well, she didn't sounded natural nor theatrical, she often sounded like she was reading directly from the script and that's not really nice in my book. Oliveira didn't try to make her sound like a 40 year old women later in the movie either, at least she could have made an effort to alter her voice, it would had been enough. If it hadn't been by the power of her expressive and beautiful face, this one wouldn't have been such a good experience. Oliveira could had come out with a better way of a tragic end for her or a more believable as well, with that rotten plank, the most that was going to happen to her, was a fractured leg.
:P
Some edits could had been better as well.
But if we take out these overly analytical details aside, it was a very interesting tale about human interactions. I didn't felt bothered by the 3 hours so that's a hint that it was a good movie.
Also for the budget that Oliveira had, it went pretty well.