DRAMA; 2hr 9m (Portuguese with subtitles)
STARRING: Gonçalo Waddington, Crista Alfaiate
Show pony: Waddington
In 1918 Burma, British civil servant Edward Abbot (Waddington) is on the run, most obviously from his fiancée, the luckless Molly Singleton (Alfaiate), but primarily from himself. Darkly handsome in his cream linen suit, Edward is an enigma in search of an explanation that director Miguel Gomes (the Arabian Nights trilogy) isn’t falling over himself to come up with. Serenely unconcerned with whys and wherefores, Gomes luxuriates in a black-and-white mood board randomly spliced with colour as Edward makes his Byronic way from Singapore to the vibrant shock of Bangkok, first by train (which derails while he sleeps), then on a miniature pony (because he can). From there he stows away on a fishing boat for a crossing to Saigon.
Apart from plainly not wanting to be married, what in the name of sanity is this dude up to? Whatever it is, the travel doesn’t agree with him. “He was feverish,” a narrator notes in voice-over. “Soaked in sweat.” You probably would be, as well, floating through a delirium of constant motion with your jilted gf hot on your absconding hide.
In Manila, Edward gets drunk a lot, which of course does nothing for his melancholia. But what the hey: Gomes’s desultory journey-as-destination is so mesmeric that by the time our spineless rambler fetches up in Osaka (sigh), its pivotal point isn’t so much what might happen next as how fantastical it’s bound to look. Not for nothing was Gomes awarded Best Director at Cannes for his drifty vision: next up on its itinerary is a group of monks with baskets on their heads, which by now barely raises an eyebrow.
And what of poor Molly, abandoned on her wedding day? Fortunately for her, the lady has an ironclad sense of humour and zero intention of quitting on her deserter, lost cause though he blatantly may be. Molly is by no means the first woman to lose her heart, her sense and her health to an undeserving man. But few have tested the limits of their faith in scenes of such poetic mystique.
