La comédie de Dieu

This one is definitively a good film, a Portuguese one. João César Monteiro is provocative, hilarious and he is touching in some hounds of Portuguese society. This is not pop corn movie, it's not one and half hour of pure action. it's a film, it's Art, so therefore it's better to prepare yourself with some culture to understand it. This film has a lot of references to literature,movies and paintings.We can see on Joao de Deus a little bit of Nosferatu on the way he seduces the young girls, and his fetishes are in the books from Sade.There's bunch of great character beyond João de Deus. Judite a ex whore who runs a ice cream factory, the Butcher Father OF joaninha, Rosalinho and Joaninha of sweet eyes who seduces and gets seduced by João de DEUS. It's a disturbing movie which will make you laugh, annoy, irritate, think and in the end wish for more.

This is the man who irritated a whole country by making a film all in black. (Snow White)

If you like to see a strange old man messing around with innocent young girls - which are even working for him - you're right! And you'll also see a lot of strange "games" with food - befor and after having been eaten...I know i didn't understand the deeper sense of this movie, but it just was to strange for me...Don't!

Longer, more obvious and gratuitous than its predecessor, here the social criticism is not so present. João himself seems to be completely absorbed with all the lust, a total pervert to be honest, and the scenes with the butcher's young daughter (who came from nowhere) were dragged for way too long. I have no idea what's the symbolism behind the dance number and the crushed eggs... but damn, it was bizarre.

Every João César Monteiro movie I see drives toward one conclusion: although being, in Portugal, the soul director whose vision of life, lust and decay is comparable to that of Baudelaire, Monteiro lacks the force of will that would make him a Rimbaud. The character João de Deus, central figure of a trilogy of which A COMÉDIA DE DEUS is the first part is none other than João César Monteiro masked as a detached and unsure version of himself. To see and to reflect on the weakest side of idealism.

To be honest I cannot elaborate on this one, as I only saw the first half hour of the movie. Comédia de Deus for me is the only movie that I ever ran away from, after some short debating with my two companions, leaving the other two spectators the cinema to themselves (I still sometimes wonder whether they managed to sit it out). The first half hour (fair is fair) is the most bewildering piece of fiction I ever saw, combining the utter idiocy of, say, the Police Academy series with the astounding 'la-di-dah, oh, what great art I'm making'-attitude of films as "Ulysses's Gaze".

Worst first half hour ever, but hey, maybe the rest was good. Go check yourself, though, because I've seen the last of this one.