Carlos Subtil

Fernando Pessoa, one of the greatest writers in Portuguese, created an immense parallel world and several heteronyms so as to endure the loneliness of genius. José Saramago, 1998 Nobel Laureate in Literature, has a heteronym, Ricardo Reis, return to Portugal after a 16-year exile in Brazil. 1936 is a perilous year with Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s Nazism, Spain’s Civil War and Salazar’s New State in Portugal. And Fernando Pessoa meets his creation, Reis. Two women, Lídia and Marcenda, are Reis’ carnal and impossible passions. “Life and Death as one” allows for literature and cinema.

The young film student Maria do Mar is working on a documentary about the old manor houses along the Douro River. It is the final project in her thesis on “Reality in Cinema”. Maria has an unlimited confidence in what is visible. Her candour and her naivety allow her to see the bright side of life – such as the beauty of the landscape and the authenticity of the place, or what’s left of it. But when Maria enters the final manor house on her list, she soon realises that something is going on in this house that is not as innocent as it first seemed. The manor is truly a house of horrors.

A technical problem aboard a transatlantic flight forces a plane to land in Porto Santo, the small island of Madeira's archipelago where, according to a legend, Christopher Columbus the 15th century navigator, lived for a while and entertained a sexual relationship with a widow and her nubile daughter. A girl photo journalist profits to stay the extra-needed days for repair, to visit the island - and eventually she'll become part of complex relationships among some of the secluded people of the island. Also, a yacht lost in the high seas in 1947 reappears from the misty horizon 50 years later - to unite Fanny and João, a contemporary navigator.

Concerns an Irish woman, Cathy (Pauline Cadell), who dearly loves her Portuguese lawyer husband, Pedro (Rui Morisson); however, unbeknownst to her, he engages in one tryst after another. Cathy soon finds herself trying to help a young delinquent get off heroin, while the youth's desperate mother joins a weird religious cult. In other segments, an elderly man is nearly driven mad with grief at the loss of his granddaughter in a train station, while a down-and-out jeweler ushers the young girl to a hotel room.

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Ronaldo is Brazilian, from good families and has a problem. His left hand is nailed to his father's table. The reason: Ronaldo has been abusing cocaine which has led him to accumulate debt. Their executioners did not forgive the fact that they had to travel once more, and again in vain, to Ronaldo's parents' cottage where he has been hiding. After confronting some characters (all of them seem sinister in Ronaldo's distorted gaze), the Brazilian manages to solve his problems, as if from a dream.