One of the reasons some of us like to see foreign films is to be exposed to the differences of a culture we might not otherwise get to explore, and Our Beloved Month Of August is a prime example. The director Gomes (who plays himself) shows us disparate scenes full of local color in the mountain villages of Portugal, and the kinds of things people do there, juxtaposed with a documentary making-of in which characters comment on their roles. The camera, as in some of our modern art films, sometimes lingers on these incidents from a distance. A plot develops in which a family travels through this area as a pop band,and the tensions which develop. Although their music isn't all that good I especially liked the scenes in which the young hockey player Fabio Oliveira plays guitar in the band, in the story he plays the character Nelson Helder. His girlfriend is a fire lookout, and Gomes toys here with the cliché of the summer romance. Another character has a herniated disc but carries a heavy religious statue in a procession, and credits faith for healing him (!) later he's hired as an actor. An added theme is foreigners, relatives who come from France and tourist girls from Belgium who flirt. Besides mixing different kinds of footage Gomes also sometimes juxtaposes the sound from one place with the image from another, and uses stylized rather than realistic color for increased effect. I can't think of anything else I've seen that quite compares with this unusual movie, except that in its self-conscious playfulness it reminded me of the much earlier, and more theatrical, work of Sacha Guitry. If you've never seen a Portugese film, this might be the one to try first.
Our Beloved Month of August
(2008)
Unique Musical/Documentary Has Specific Portugese Flavor
13 November 2014
Warning: Spoilers