A young Portuguese prince, named Afonso, decides that his life’s mission is to be a volunteer firefighter. He wants to give up the privileges and golden cradles of the Portuguese aristocracy to help in the chronic saga of the fires in Portugal. It seems like a story born of a peculiar news. And if he does it, it’s because he is, but in the form of comic and sexual fantasy. Choreographies that involve positions on the side of security, power-points of penises to decorate the Portuguese forests, a love story between two men, the colonizer and the colonized, the black and the white, history and the future, the sublime and the real. Here is the first comedy of the Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues, in “Fogo-Fátuo”.
This film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was presented in the Directors’ Fortnight. And despite delving into a genre that had never quite worked, the director’s fears were quickly allayed. “In Cannes they offered me almost everything, but I chose the Directors’ Fortnight. I was right in the choice. It was amazing, people laughed from start to finish, clapped during the facial cumshot scene. [que decorre numa área de um pinhal ardido, enquanto os protagonistas trocam insultos racistas]even surprised me. Then I realized that the film worked, “she revealed in an interview with Observer.
João Pedro Rodrigues hasn’t made a feature film since “O Ornithologist” (2016) and now he has been showing his latest work at various festivals, from Toronto to New York, passing through Lisbon, where he opened this year’s Queer. He does not like to repeat himself, nor does he like, despite working mainly in French lands, to stop having a critical look at Portuguese cinema. He believes that “quality is not lacking” in what is done here to reach the competition of the most important film festival in the world, Cannes. The “particularity” of Portuguese cinema is what makes it so recognized abroad, he guarantees. But despite the talent spanning generations of filmmakers, the money never comes. “It is impossible to make films only with the money that is in Portugal. If there is a certain ambition, it is not possible,” he says.
[o trailer de “Fogo-Fátuo”:]
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Source: Observadora
