Nós

Portuguese cinema has a problem connecting with its public and this movie is no exception. Most times, the movie is made for the director's own ego rather than the public. That's OK with me as long as they don't ask from people the admiration and the support they don't deserve.

In Nós we have a couple who almost doesn't speak through the whole movie and we're supposed to interpret their feelings by their blank faces and connect to the story of this unemotional characters. Talking about sex in a detached way doesn't necessarily make for a good film, and in my opinion, here it simply doesn't work.

The only thing worth seeing, or rather listening to, is the soundtrack, not very appropriate for the movie, but still a very good selection of tracks.

It's a suburban movie about a suburban story of loneliness, emptiness, and lost hopes that just have gone between the every day's routines. It has a strong visual effect because it portrays very well the uncolored lives that exist in all cities. From the beginning we understand it's a movie about a city, its "ugly" and suburban side, and the lives of some common people that don't feel happy with the empty lives they have.

Angela is married but she almost doesn't see her husband because she works at day and he works at night. She feels very lonely and empty, as all her dreams were gone. Casually she saw an advertisement of "man searching woman" on a public internet post and she wrote this guy a letter with the purpose of meeting him. This guy is Francisco, he is new in the town and he's working on the building construction and living on a small hostel. The relationship between them will not be easy because they hardly speak and definitely don't express their feelings to one another…What they have are just some fortuity encounters where nothing happens…She says she wants to take it slowly…

But if the movie is a portrait of the loneliness that exists in the modern and suburban lives today, it's also a representation of the forbidden desires that usually are connected to theses lives of emptiness… The movie has an excellent allegory to this: "The Arena of desires" (in the plot it is a cheap cabaret-discotheque where a Beatriz's friend works)! The spectacular visual effect and the hard music just give it a wild ambiance! Desire is everything that really matters there. Eternalize the moment, feel all your body sensations and let the sexual desires blow up your mind! It's all you have to do there!

Now about the acting… it could be much better. The movie hardly has dialogs and if it's true that sometimes a picture worth 1000 words, it's also true that this movie would be better with some more dialogs. It turns a bit boring sometimes because of that. To sum up, I will give it some extra score because of the "Arena of Desires" scenes (they are simply great!). I will give it 6 out of 10.

A young man is freed from jail (for how long was he there?) and goes to the woods where he has wild sex with a prostitute and then walks in the city where he moves around that same night, visits an erotic show cabaret and finishes by renting a bath-less room in a cheap hotel where the landlady's daughter soon feels herself for him, a feeling that he doesn't return anyway. Since he feels lonely he puts an add on internet asking for a feminine company. Here enters the scene a young married lady whose husband works at night and all he wants when he gets home in the early morning is to get some sleep which he does at once while his wife has to calm her lust by making love to herself alone while he sleeps beside her. This lady answer the young man's ad and they eventually meet but she shows herself too shy for a deep relationship so their meetings are very chaste indeed and limited to conversation and a few innocent caresses not even a kiss. The young woman appears as having a lot of complexes and suffering for the want-don't want contradictory syndrome. But suddenly the young man takes her and a more uninhibited friend of hers to the erotic show cabaret where he begins a sensual dance with that friend of hers. This event unchains her hidden impulses and from now on she has a behaviour that contrasts much with her pretended shyness which surprises and shocks our hero very much but leads to a more or less happy outcome. These last scenes are a bit unconvincing, artificial and even not much plausible. We must say in fact that Alexandra Freudenthal in the role of Angela the shy lonely married young woman does her role not very well and in a rather unconvincing way. Nevertheless the movie is well made and directed and the cut rhythm is good enough. All the situations and events we watch there are true end authentic in human terms but rather banal nowadays in certain stratums of our society. So the movie lacks originality and depth even in psychological terms.