O Ornitólogo

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calls Fernando by the name Anthony, and by the time he meets Jesus' identical twin brother, Thomas, actor Hamy has been replaced by director Rodrigues.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.

The movie is about a bird watcher out on a camping trip doing his thing when his raft boat crashes in the woods forcing him to struggle to get out while some odd things are happening.

It was a pretty awesome adventure, as the The Ornithologist would encounter stranger and stranger things, like two good Christian Chinese girls who wanted to offer him to the evil spirits in the forest and a group of topless girls on horseback in a hunting tribe.

Thought it was cool watching this dude survive his odd wilderness experience, but I must admit, my mind is not as open as I thought as there was a naked man on naked man sex scene that I could not watch. I scene other movies where two dudes kiss and have sex but I don't think I've ever seen two men full frontal naked getting romantic. If it makes me seem unenlightened that I had to keep my head turned the whole time then so be it, cause I had too. It was funny cause the scene walks you into to it very easy but still could not take it.

But I did like the movie. I thought it was a great adventure movie about a guy in the wilderness. Hopefully it has also soften me to men or men love scenes just in case it comes up again.

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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.

One of the few (if not the only) films that can take so many leaps into the plot, instigating you to embrace the idea and watch until the end. The new film by João Pedro Rodrigues, a guy who has always embraced the theme "queer" in his work, because there are, yes, great films in the gay scene for the LGBT community made by him. One that I really enjoyed was "The Phantom" (2000). It's his, too; "Odete" (2005) and "The Last Time I Saw Macau" (2012). It's curious how your cinema breathes Pasolini (but it's not a comparison). I think Rodrigues, like Gregg Araki, Gus Van Sant and Pedro Almodóvar, citing my favorites, are real filmmakers who hover the flag. But none of them focuses exclusively on the subject as Rodrigues - who also proved to go to other ways with this film. "The Ornithologist" is a journey of self-discovery. A bucolic adventure of a hermit in the wild heart. With some terrifying and surreal passages. The ending is totally wrapped in mysteries (just like the whole movie) and open to various interpretations. Their cinema is not childish, so the drama is strengthened by maturity and always bring erotic situations and sex scenes without fear of the showing. Nudity here is the most curious point, especially in a movie that never shows, a priori, clues to anything, just makes it happen. But, as I said earlier, the swings are the big cheap of the tape. It's a plot-twist after another. It is an exotic, economical and creative production. Yes. "I'm recovering ..." The Portuguese also make a daring and original cinema. This is a real lesson in script and direction. The sensation is almost a trip without purposeful destiny. Is it really that Fernando wants to go home?

Oh, before I forget, it's a religious-themed film, in fact, it could not be missed. It is always pertinent to poke the jaguar with the short stick, right?

It is another collaboration with João Rui Guerra da Mata, art director, screenwriter, and finally, filmmaker, who always works on Rodrigues' films.

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?