The Cinema Guild have put in an order for more Manoel de Oliveira – the 100 plus year old director just preemed The Strange Case of Angelica – an Un Certain Regard Cannes entry last May which received better reviews from Cannes critics than I had anticipated. Currently putting out the Portuguese filmmaker’s Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl in a short release with a DVD release coming out in September, Cinema Guild would cap off the year with his latest film – that I imagine will play at TIFF this Fall.
Set in the 1950s, Isaac is a young photographer living in a boarding house in Régua. In the middle of the night, he receives an urgent call from a wealthy family to come and take the last photograph of their daughter, Angelica, who died just a few days after her wedding. Arriving at the house of mourning, Isaac gets his first glimpse of Angelica and is overwhelmed by her beauty. As soon as he looks at her through the lens of his camera, the young woman appears to come back to life just for him. Isaac instantly falls in love with her. From that moment on, Angélica will haunt him night and day, until exhaustion.
