O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra

"O Mistério da Estrada de Sintra" was the first crime thriller written in Portuguese, by Eça de Queirós and Ramalho Ortigão in the 1870s. This movie picks up that plot, and adds Eça and Ramalho's real lives, together with the real lives of the people they based their novel on. Although fictionalized, the whole movie has a feeling of reality to it and is a nice epoch reconstruction.

Ramalho is kidnapped at night and demanded to medically tend to an Englishman shot in a Portuguese noble manor. From then on, the plot splits between Ramalho and Eça writing a fictionalized account of this incident and the events leading to it; and coincidentally the writers' fiction ends up being very near to what really happened with Rytmel and the Valadas family. Both worlds end up mixing, and in the end we don't know if the whole thing has really happened.

Good plot and direction, good or at least passable acting for most of the main cast (the rest are a bit wooden), a period piece and a story by Eça and Ramalho make this unmissable, even if it is not a cinema masterpiece.

In the second half of 19th century the Portuguese writers Eça de Queiroz and Ramalho Ortigão wrote a newspaper serial under this same title in a curious way: each one wrote the respective chapters alternately. This movie is based on that serial. It intertwines it, however, with the story of the two authors writing it with a lot of incidents caused mainly because the husband of the countess involved in the story accuses them of telling true scandalous events of the countess love life. This comprehends an amorous relationship between the countess and a British officer, the countess' cousin who is in love with her and a Cuban more or less libertine woman who is trying to seduce the British officer. The story ends (this is where the movie begins) with the murder of the British officer (by the countess? by the Cuban woman?). The story is told in a confusing and incongruous way mixing the writers' fiction with the supposed reality without letting us know where one ends and the other begins. The acting is just passable. The only positive quality of the movie is the good re-creation of the the atmosphere of that epoch in terms of sceneries and costumes making it a poor chocolate wrapped in rich silvered paper.

Start with the book. It was not actually supposed to be assembled as a book, instead being worth following as a silly succession of events, week by week (the film makes that clear) Within that specific. intention, i suppose it was a success, a kind of "war of the worlds" effect, placed in the dumb still romantic bourgeois in Lisbon's 800's. It worked because it directly addressed the intellectual dispute between Eça's progressive group and the older useless romantic elite. And it worked because it fed the lust for scandal of the decadent owners of the money.

But assembled as a book, drags. The writing was way less focused than pretty much anything from both the authors, probably because the texts were produced at journalistic rhythm. The story is poorly balanced, even though i didn't feel in the book the kind of divergence between both authors as is hinted in the film. So, anything else by Eça or Ramalho is probably better than this book. But we take it for the story that surrounds it.

Than we have this film. It is, as stated by the director and co-writer, not the story of the book, but the story of the story of the book. Book/film, within the film. This is interesting, and i think "mistério..." could not have been made without taking to consideration the larger framing of the book in its context. It's great fun with that context, it's useless without it. So, i think the premises to the film is focused and interesting.

But than, to many liberties are taken in the adaptation, and nearly any goes in favour to make the "story of the story" more apt for modern cinematographic imaginations. In many cases they're just useless. The focus is in enhancing the personal relation between Eça and Ramalho and make that into the fuel to the story evolution. And that's just soap operish. And the story within, which actually Is like a soap opera in its original intentions is taken so seriously in the film, that we can't relax and laugh with it as we were supposed to. So what began as a clever exploitation of a unique experience in Portuguese, ended up being a total mess-up. I think why so many productions like this is due to a lack of self-confidence by the people involved. Not believing that the material is good enough to breath on its own, they butcher their own products so than can become more "appealing" to the "audiences". Well these films usually end up being a joke of themselves, such as this book is a joke on the romantics.

Also, another problem is how productions like this, in Portugal, are incredibly broken into several pieces without existing a single mind, or small group of minds, that controls the whole thing. In the extras, there is a moment in which someone comments on how they got files from the internet with the soundtrack to try of the film! Such a small scale and there are no personal meetings to ensure things go right. I mean, James Cameron could deliver a relatively unified vision in a production that span dozens of countries, involving countless people who didn't know each other, but here that is not done with such a small scale film. And of course that affects directly the outcome. So we have several clearly displaced actors, and among them, the countess is the more insultuous. She's a wax figure, bloodless, even speak-less (she is dubbed so we wouldn't have Brazilian accent on a Portuguese countess). I suppose that's also why we have Carmen made into a cuban (?), she who in the story is a Bizet's Carmen.

Ivo Canelas is not very talented, but he delivers passion. That deserved a better guidance, by someone who would know how to. He needs to cut that methodic crap, and start being more true to himself. That's the method. But he probably needed something that needer Paixão da Costa nor Vasconcelos can deliver him. Guidance.

My opinion: 3/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

This movie was a very pleasant surprise. This was for sure the Portuguese movie that gave me more pleasure to watch till the date.The ambiance of the beginning of 20 century is very well accomplished, beauty full actresses, Eça and Ortigão are as if they were "for real". It has also all the ingredients to please a Sherlock Holmes fan. No doubt this is a turning point for Portuguese cinema, so I hope. For all those of you that (just like me) get the movies from the internet don't do that with this one, it really HAS to be see in a theater! and you will be helping Portuguese cinema industry that really needs a push.

Nuno M.