THE PORTUGUESE HOUSE (ADV15)
UNA QUINTA PORTUGUESA
In this beautiful and poetic drama, the disappearance of a quiet teacher’s wife leads him to impersonate another man at a Portuguese country house, where he forms an unexpected friendship with the owner.
Fernando (Manolo Solo), a university geography professor in Barcelona with a fondness for paper maps over digital ones, decides to travel to the opposite coast of the Iberian Peninsula after his Serbian wife suddenly leaves him and returns to her country with no explanation. On the northern coast of Portugal, he meets Manuel (Xavi Mira), a gardener, also Spanish, stateless and itinerant, who captivates Fernando, and inadvertently opens his eyes to a beautiful new world. He ends up taking a job at the local ‘Portuguese house’ of the title, whose elegant, mysterious and elusive owner Amalia (Maria de Medeiros – you may remember her from ‘Pulp Fiction’), oversees a grand house of wondrous atmosphere and secrets. You will notice echoes of Éric Rohmer as well as those of traditional storytelling, and if you enjoyed 2023’s ‘The Taste of Things’, you will absolutely love this. (Subtitles)
Spain/Portugal 2025 Avelina Prat 114m
