Venice 2008: Oliveira’s Seven Minutes of Humour
Manoel de Oliveira
Averse to awards (”Some people find them very encouraging, but I only like those for Lifetime Achievement”), the Portuguese master is this year presenting his short Do Visível ao Invisível, which is screening out of competition. “I’m not a competitive person”, explains the director, who in a few hours will share the honours of the opening evening with the Coen brothers’ highly-anticipated Burn After Reading.
Oliveira’s latest effort lasts barely seven minutes: this is all the time needed for this otherwise expansive director to reveal the paradoxes of a society so cutting edge in its means of communication that its members have become incapable of communicating.
Two old friends - Brazilian Leon Cakoff (who also produced the film) and Portugal’s Ricardo Trepa (Oliveira’s grandson and a regular in his films since No, or the Vain Glory of Command, 1990) - bump into each other amidst the traffic of São Paolo. They want to chat - about this and that, the world and maximum systems - but their mobile phones won’t stop ringing and interrupting them. So, in order to keep their conversation going, they find the best solution is to call each other.
The “comic” moments are well timed (Oliveira edited the film), and this evening’s audience - whom the director prefers to refer to as “the viewers” - will be able to compare the effects with the deranged humour of the Coen brothers, who return to a more playful approach after the weighty No Country for Old Men.
Produced by Cakoff and Renata De Almeida, Do Visível ao Invisível is the first instalment in a multipart film, the work-in-progress Mundo Invisìvel, commissioned by the São Paolo Film Festival. Directors from all over the world are taking part in the project, including Fernando Solanas, Hector Babenco, Guy Maddin and Poland’s Jerzy Stuhr.
(Gabriele Barcaro for cineuropa)
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