User Reviews

This could be... well just another Portuguese movie. But it had a special meaning, it was directed and produced by a few teachers of mine, and in my school many tried to see it, many went to the session our local Cinemateca provided, many went asking themselves what it would be like. I just happened to catch it at my work, at the national television's archives. Well, my friends, if you need another example that bad Portuguese movies are not stereotypes but in fact very real things, this it, the real example of how boring, badly dubbed, pretentious, tiresome, grey, badly illuminated and infuriatingly unbearable could be our movies twenty years ago. The problem is not the movie "per se" (I'm sure many those who participated in it feel sorry for themselves today), the problem is that two days ago I tuned in my TV and on was a Manoel de Oliveira movie from 2002 which looked exactly like this, or worse (even more pretentious). Bad acting included. Why isn't the audience even entitled to understand what are they talking about, or simply what they are saying? Why this obsession with complete disdain for the people who are already making an effort by continuing to watch the movie? This one's depressing, confusing and the worst part is that it could choose not to be. But maybe I am beating around the bush. It's a naive exercise in film-making, an irritating and amazingly boring one. But my sympathy for the director himself as a person is not in question. I learned a great deal from him back in my school days. My main problem is that in Portugal there are TOO MANY movies like these, to the point that the words "portuguese movie" are synonymous with "don't waste your time because it's boring, pretentious and impossible to watch until the end". 3 for some shots, and out of sympathy.

This movie is great, I've seen it twice and the last time more than 20 years ago and I still remember it with found memories. The plot was not really that important, but for me the combination of the summer heat with the Edgar P. Jacobs comic book "Le piége diabolique" was for me the odd but perfect combination. The plot not really easy to explain in words after so many years, summertime is coming to an end and the main character Isabel is a teanage girl lost in life. Her father and sister live with her and she has romantic interest in a boy called Diogo. However she goes to the big city (Lisbon) and after awhile she calls back Diogo and the she is in a situation that her sister is leaving (for long trip) and her father is hill. Life is passing by the characters in the middle of the heat of the end of summertime.