O Estranho Caso de Angélica (2010) (The Strange Case of Angelica)
Manoel de Oliveira
Portugese

 

The Strange Case of AngelicaAndré Bazin famously remarked that the photographic image, by its very conception, seeks to ‘embalm’ dead objects and preserve them for posterity. Cinema, suggests Manoel de Oliveira’s wondrous new work The Strange Case of Angelica (2010), does one better in that it also resurrects these dead objects back to life. Quite literally here. At heart, it’s the story of amateur filmmaking and budding cinephilia – the joy of discovering the marvel of the moving image, which, like the discovery of sexuality, is a private ecstasy. Two well-read men in the film discuss how matter and anti-matter unite to form pure energy while our anachronistic lead man Isaac (Richard Trêpa) is still bewitched by how mise en scène – his profession – can meet montage to create pure magic. Like the director’s previous film, Angelica straddles two worlds – ‘contemporary’ and ‘classical’ periods – both of which tease and pull and push Isaac. Isaac, admittedly, is a man of old ways (he’s probably exactly 115 years old), marooned in the present economic landscape, who finds his romance thwarted not just by class (as in Eccentricities) but also by religion and by the fact that his love interest is dead. He, however, trusts that he can find love through the power of his art and escape his current predicament. (Alas, he has to die so that he can enter his art). Using unpolished CG that’s almost as old as the protagonist, Oliveira takes us back to (rather, attempts to recreate) the historical juncture at which we might snap out of our sensual numbness in order to start all over and, once again, discover the magic – of romance, of cinema.