Fuego fatuo

At 67 minutes, this compact feature packs a lot of themes: climate change and environmentalism, male erotica and a gay love story, colonialism, privilege and duty, and musical numbers including a dance sequence.

Portugal has a deposed royal family, whose successors are still called "Prince". In 2011, young Prince Alfredo is taken by his father to the royal forest, where a love of (tall) trees is instilled. Sometime later, with forest fires caused by climate change in the news, Alfredo decides to become a firefighter. Volunteering with an (ironically urban) unit, he appears to skip boot camp, is assigned to a Black firefighter for training, and they fall in love.

I saw this film at its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, with director Q+A, which informs some of the following

There are scenes in the family dining room, where young Alfredo spars with his mother, making a speech like Greta, and having his mother calling him a republican. The room is dominated by a large painting of Black servants / slaves, which is his only valuable possession he has left when he dies in 2069. The scene is shot thru an opening that can be closed by sliding doors, suggesting that the family is acting out a staged formality, even in private.

Given that Alfredo studied art history, he is teased by the mostly-naked firemen in the locker room by their group poses for their "calendar photos" that were supposed to simulate famous paintings. Later, he is shown pictures of male genitalia, as he names what each reminds nim of.

Written before covid but shot after, the director worked coronavirus into the script. The music includes classical and Portuguese popular songs, with a joke built into one by replacing the word "fellow" with the similar-sounding "phallus". The royal forest is the remains of an actual royal forest, after most was burned by a wildfire, and he agreed with an audience member that the trees (leaves above the camera frame) can be read as phallic symbols.

My major beef with the film is that it is too short. A lot of stuff is thrown at the audience without much development, and it flashes by like, well, a will-o'-the-wisp.

I came to this via an article in the Guardian newspaper about films one hadn't seen in 2023 but should have. This one in particular intrigued me enough to seek it out and it was worth it.

I really wasn't being convinced at first, but then got the idea about the forest and the upholding of tradition of a pretender royal family conceptualised in the formal setting of their evening meals together. Duty, tradition and service outwardly were the watchwords of the day; indifference was the real mood. The former come back to haunt young Alfredo when it was his time to assume the mantle of empty kingship.

Set in two separate years, the piece was in turns moving, fun, sexy, artistic and sad. The unsimulated love scene between Alfredo and Afonso was an integral part of the flow and not grafted on for titillation, as so often happens. Its intimacy made it harder to bear for the viewer when stultifying duty called.

Two parts of the film moved me terribly. The final song sung at the funeral. And the firemen insisting that he have "a Pietà", which harked back to the tableaux fifty years earlier. That was sublime.

Thank you to the Guardian's film critic!