The Portuguese Nun Review

The Portuguese Nun
A young actress in Lisbon (Leonor Baldaque), freshly arrived for a movie shoot, falls under the spell of a nun she find kneeling in the in the chapel where she is filming.

by David Parkinson |
Published on
Release Date:

21 Jan 2011

Running Time:

127 minutes

Certificate:

Original Title:

Portuguese Nun, The

Ravishingly photographed in mesmerising slow pans and abrupt close-ups, this is both a paean to Lisbon and a homage to the peerless Portuguese auteur, Manoel de Oliveira. The focus falls on French actress Leonor Baldaque and her obsessions with leading man Adrien Michaux, orphan Francisco Mozos and praying nun Ana Moreira. But director Eugène Green uses her wanderings and reveries to pass idiosyncratic observations on love and faith, film and life that are both mischievously poetic and unexpectedly provocative. Stylised, minimalist and cerebral, perhaps, but also deceptively deadpan, passionate and poignant.

A beautiful, sensous ode to love, life and Lisbon.
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