Quinze Pontos na Alma (2011) Reviews

• Much cry and little wool

  valadas2012-11-19

  It's a rather ambitious movie indeed that doesn't come up to its director's expectations. In fact despite the excellent camera work, images and movements, the sometimes gorgeous framings and the rather successful players' performance there is little more in terms of the story development. The story begins with a rather uncommon event: a married woman in her thirties is driving herself to a party when while crossing a viaduct in Lisbon she sees a man trying to jump down. She stops her car and runs desperately to him to prevent his suicide. From the moment their eyes meet something seems to unite them strongly and they begin to kiss but suddenly the man disappears down the valley. The woman enters a dreamy obsession with this and from then on she tries to introduce herself in the man's family presenting herself as his girlfriend and abandoning her past life totally. This drama should have required the strong hand of a mixture of a Hitchcock with a Billy Wilder or even a Kubrick and a Douglas Sirk. Unfortunately Alves Do Ó has not such genius despite being a talented director and this drama would have required besides its formal and technical good performance much more depth in dialogues, situations and attitudes in terms of contents which he revealed himself unable to show. This was a pity because this screenplay would have deserved much better.