El ornitólogo

I can't say that I don't respect this film. There's a lot going on underneath, but it's one of those films that you either get or you don't. I don't think I fully got it, either in a intellectual level or on an emotional one. Even if the former doesn't come at first, if the latter does, that's all that matters. The film lost me, but I also know it's one that will benefit from rewatches and further introspection. I can't wait to really gather my thoughts on it to see how it fares with time for me. In the meantime, I recommend it, with hesitations, but only to the right people.

The distinct individualism of João Pedro Rodrigues' worldview is turned inward via an unflaggingly intriguing poetical riff on the life of St. Anthony of Padua in "The Ornithologist."

While possibly the director's most accessible film to date, calling this visually striking work "accessible" doesn't mean most audiences will fully understand Rodrigues' delightfully meandering paths, nor appreciate his homoerotic, playfully blasphemous modernised hagiography.

Religious conservatives will be as apoplectic as they were with Godard's "Hail Mary," but art-house lovers, including those not always in sync with the "To Die Like a Man" helm-er's style should find much pleasure, even if they're perplexed by what it all means.

Narratively, the film gets even more bizarre. A Latin-speaking Amazon (performance artist Juliane Elting, whose stage moniker pays fantastic tribute to Julian Eltinge) calls Fernando by the name Anthony, and by the time he meets Jesus' identical twin brother, Thomas, actor Hamy has been replaced by director Rodrigues.

Visually, "The Ornithologist" is Rodrigues' most classically shot film, and the first entirely lenses outdoors. Regular collaborator Rui Poças brings out the richness of the forest and river canyon in all its natural splendours, at times almost hinting at a European version of the sylvan spirit of Thai magical realism rather than the lurid spectacle of the director's "The Last Time I Saw Macao." Unsurprisingly given both the title and the director's academic training, avian scenes are lovingly realised and a constant source of wonder.

"Fernando" (Paul Hamy) is out in the Portuguese wilderness doing a bit of birdwatching when he gets caught up in the rapids, his canoe is trashed and he finds himself rescued by two rather curious Chinese women - "Fei" (Han Wen) and her girlfriend "Ling" (Chan Suan). Things get a bit on the surreal side from this point as his journey continues and he next encounters the handsome, mute, goatherd "Jesus" (Xelo Cagiao) before a rather unfathomable tragedy ensues and the story takes on an almost fantastic nature that sees "Fernando" having to come to terms with his actions all under the supervision of a beautiful white dove that clearly has a more symbolic function as yet to be explained. Is he ever going to make it to civilisation? Does he really want to? It's quite a curious film, this, with no obvious purpose to it. Initially, it looks more like a natural history docudrama with some lovely photography of birds in their natural habitat and us (and him) as mere observers, but once his trip becomes less routine the story starts to head seriously off piste and becomes a bit too random for me. It's not that it isn't structured, it's that director João Pedro Rodrigues doesn't seem so bothered about taking us with him as his mind wanders for two hours of really quite eccentrically indulgent moviemaking. There's little rhyme-nor-reason to the second act, if you like, as "Fernando" discovers what looks like the abandoned garden from the late Michael Jackson's estate amidst the forest then some Amazonian type paintballers with Centaur aspirations! It's quirky and inquisitive about attitudes to faith - and not just 20th century faiths at that - and I did like the last five minutes, but on balance I found it quite a long watch to leave feeling slightly bamboozled.

A bird-watcher in jungles of Portugal gets lost and embarks on a journey of rediscovery of self and religion.Apparently ,this Portuguese film is an homoerotic allegory of the life of St Anthony of Padua,who is considered the patron saint of lost things,and whose original name was Fernando.The film is shot at beautiful locations to start with and works well till the ornithologist gets lost while kayaking.Then begins the torture,as the film descends from realism into supposed transcendental surrealism.There appear two Chinese lesbians tied up in a bondage relationship,members of a cult who dance and kill a boar in the middle of the night,a shepherd by the name of Jesus who makes out with the protagonist and who the latter ends up stabbing,nude huntresses riding horses and remains of a monastery.I am not sure if this work shud be classified as magic realism.The ornithologist was on medication since the very beginning,and ends up losing his pills when he meets with an accident.It can be argued then that whatever happened after that was in his mind.I watched the film because this film was on the ' to be watched' list of a friend.Maybe the cinematography made him like this nut job.

A staunch queer cinema visionary and nonconformist, Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues' fifth feature beguilingly takes a leap of faith onto a religious theme, a pilgrimage to Saint Anthony of Padua, conspicuously transcribing its story into the existential trials and tribulations of our titular ornithologist Fernando (Hamy), which is also St. Anthony's birth name, stranded in a modern-day Portuguese waterway and forests.

Fernando, an atheist from the word go, embarks on his stork-scouting journey with gusto and alacrity, and the implication that it is not his first sortie in the area makes his adventure quite up his alley. Few background information is purveyed, other than he is under medication and has a male lover who is caring for him. Contrasting Fernando's bird-watching/telescopic angle with different bird's-eye views, it is the modus operandi brings home a numinous frisson of watching and simultaneously being watched, literally sublimates the nature's gaze with a plethora of wild feathered friends hovering around incessantly through the film. When Fernando's kayak is upset during the rapids, the story starts to take shape into a multi-layered religious mythology through Fernando's various real/surreal encounters, garnished with sexual innuendos (undressed and tied- up by two young Chinese female God-bothers, a sadomasochistic position enticing one's fantasy; the urolagnia experience in the darkness among a contingent of masqueraded roarers), and an in- the-buff dalliance with a deaf-mute shepherd boy named Jesus (Cagiao), which ends in manslaughter, a startling incident but concocted with blasé wantonness.

Conceivably, when one liquidates Jesus, there is nothing but a road to redemption beckons him, Fernando must carry on his mythical transmogrification into a pious St. Antony by dint of his self- inflicted ritual for absolution (that is where symbolic tunnel, tableaux vivants and inscrutable gestures abound), consummated by being dispatched by the alter ego of Jesus, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, if credits must be given to Rodrigues' wheeze of contemplating a grand mythos within an entrancing temporal sphere, his didactic exegesis is less a merit to be reckoned with.

Leading actor Paul Hamy credibly shoulders on a role which requires boldness and physical exertion, instils his open-faced earthiness into the overlaying mystique and alone-in-the-woods background, which successfully retains Fernando in the cynosure, even when narrative longueur inevitably lurks. Tellingly, the film renders a captivating landscape to those eyes yearning for natural's majestic design, whether it is the picturesque on the surface or the uncanny residing in the deep, also the foley artists (Nuno Carvalho and Martin Delzescaux) ply their own distinctive aural intrusion to that latter effect: eerie, preternatural and strident. In the end of the day, THE ORNITHOLOGIST is another contrived fable trying to mythicize religion in order to elicit a sense of meta-sanctity of our own existence, but the fruition thuddingly slumps between artsy-fartsy and nonplussing, on top of that, where are the storks, anyway?