Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl

Portuguese film-maker Manoel de Oliveira's career spans the silent and digital age; he celebrated his 101st birthday shortly before the release of this refined adaptation of a short story by the 19th-century Portuguese realist writer Eca de Queiros. Echoes of Luis Buñuel and Claude Chabrol abound as de Oliveira cuts between a train conversation involving Ricardo Trepa and Leonor Silveira and the events that laid the young man low. Instantly smitten with demure blonde Catarina Wallenstein, Trepa is dismissed from his post at a Lisbon fabric store after incurring the wrath of employer uncle (Diogo Doria), and his desperation to prove himself worthy of his beloved lures him into social disgrace and a dubious African business enterprise with shady trader Rogerio Samora. Luminously photographed by Sabine Lancelin, this is both deliciously old-fashioned and wittily wise in its satirical insights into our own recessional times.