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MANOEL DE OLIVEIRA SIGNS THE FESTIVAL’S POSTER AND A NEW FILM ABOUT DESIRE AND PERVERSION

Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira signs the commemorative poster for the 30th São Paulo International Film Festival and will be present at the festival with his new film BELLE TOUJOURS, finished at the age of 97 and presented for the first time to the audience at the recent 63rd Venice Festival. Oliveira’s design suggests a critical insight of the cinema projected at the Festival, where the eye of the spectator fuses itself to the festival’s brand, created by Tomie Ohtake.

The poster of the 30th São Paulo International Film Festival with master Oliveira’s signature follows a tradition started at the 10th festival, in 1986, with Federico Fellini. The design by the Italian filmmaker, a sad clown, was followed in 1991 by another Italian, at the 15th Festival, one by Michelangelo Antonioni, who, after a stroke, painting with his left hand, made a desolate alpine landscape, like his list of characters suffering from incommunicability. Other great names connected to movies also signed the Festival’s posters: Takeshi Kitano, Emir Kusturica, Aleksander Sokurov, Atom Egoyan, Amos Gitai and Isabella Rossellini.

But BELLE TOUJOURS was acclaimed at the Venice Festival and highlighted as a masterpiece by Italian press. Oliveira uses the excuse of paying homage to filmmaker Luis Buñuel and his screenplay writer Jean-Claude Carrière for the film “Belle de Jour”, made in 1967, to talk about desire and perversion. “These things only the rich can imagine because they have the time and live in leisure”, says Oliveira.

Catherine Deneuve didn’t accept Oliveira’s invitation to repeat her role in “Belle de Jour” 38 years later. It was a fatal mistake for her, which only wore her out during Venice Festival, leaving the impression that she was afraid of the weigh of time, that it was only a matter of vanity. Her exposure at the same festival as a juror wasn’t able to avoid these comparisons. Above all because actor Michel Piccoli accepted to repeat the same character of the original movie, adapted from a novel by Joseph Kessel. To replace Catherine Deneuve, Manoel de Oliveira brought Bulle Ogier, who did very well at the role of the adulterous wife haunted by past guilt.

The characters meet again at Oliveira’s movie by mere chance during a musical concert in Paris. Husson starts investigating Séverine, passing by the places she attends with the same bourgeois attitude of the past. “Man is the only stupid animal”, sentences Oliveira in one of the many interviews he gave in Venice. And this is part of his new film, at the magnificent ending, where Séverine accepts Husson’s invitation for dinner, hoping to know if her intimate secrets and betrayals were ever heard by the husband. Filmmakers have special fascination, and spectators as well, for films where food is valued and appears with distinction, respect and seductive highlight. If not for all its other qualities, the banquet at BELLE TOUJOURS is another to be included in this gallery of anthologies.


Translation into English: Laura Rebessi (laurarebessi@gmail.com)

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