Veneno Cura (2007)

User Rating:

5.0/10   

Director:

Raquel Freire

Writer:

Raquel Freire (writer)

Release Date:

15 January 2009 (Portugal)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

Love saves. Love kills. Love heals.

Plot Keywords:

Slap In The Face | Art | Tragic Love | Controversial | Female Nudity

Cast

Margarida Carvalho	...	Rubia
Sofia Marques	...	Rosa
Sandra Rosado	...	Rita the 'Empress'
Miguel Moreira	...	António Miguel the Lawyer
Gustavo Vicente	...	Francisco the photographer
Gonçalo Amorim	...	Tójó the stage announcer
João Garcia Miguel	...	Dr. John - Miguel's associate
Susana Vidal	...	Miss Evita - exotic dancer
Ana Ribeiro	...	Rosália
Ana Brandão	...	Opera Singer
Márcia Breia	...	Rosa's Mother-in-Law
Monica Calle	...	Hospital Doctor
Maria d'Aires	...	Prison Guard #1
Vera Mantero	...	Prison Guard #2
Luísa Cruz	...	Belinha

Runtime:

Portugal:90 min

Country:

Portugal | Spain

Language:

Portuguese

Colour:

Colour

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Portugal:M/16

Filming Locations:

Lisbon, Portugal

Company:

Clap Filmes

Love is the poison, love is the cure...

VENENO CURA is a dirty story about love, death and redemption... It's all a bit undefined and mixed as sometimes are our feelings for someone or something. The movie is assumedly poetic and allegoric but at the same time it puts in front of us a dirty reality we don't want to see! It shows us feelings of anger and tenderness, beauty and dirty, love and filthy eroticism, hope and despair, willing to suicide and will to live; all of this in a complex and intense story that has a (very) open ending to further interpretation (and I like that, I must say!)...

The plot is divided in numbered "segments" but I think we can't say it's non-linear, because even being complex and many times twisted we can recognize a sequential number of events in a linear chronology. So, in order words, these segments are "ordered" but shall have their own particular significance to the plot. The movie is mainly about intense, complex and twisted love stories, as told, but it also is a deep reflexion about our own self value as Human Beings, as one of the main tag lines of the film asks: "When you lose everything what makes you go on?"

About the technical details I must say it supplanted my expectation because it has a great cinematography which is shown essentially by two different ways. On one hand we have the scenes inside the "Imperatiz" (a nightclub) and the allegoric dreams, which combine a beautiful visual effect with melodic (and almost morbid!) music. It helps the viewer to enter in this world of sadness and melancholy. On the other hand are the beautiful shots of the Oporto city. We can watch it from the river (one more time the director Raquel Freire shows her passion for her hometown, as she had done before in the short film RIO VERMELHO). In addition we also have beautiful sights from the river, "Rio Douro", and the two main bridges of the city, "Ponte de D. Luis" and "Ponte da Arrabida".

The soundtrack is also very intense, sad and mysterious and it fits very well in the film. The acting is good, especially if we notice that a great part of the actors are almost unknown. For Margarida Carvalho, which plays RUBIA, one of the main characters, it's even her debut. But she did a nice job.

One more great work from the young, but very promising director, Raquel Freire. I score it 9/10 (since I started writing comments here on IMDb, almost 3 years ago, it's the first time I give a 9/10 score to a Portuguese film, and I guess it means something...)!