19/11/2024 - Portuguese director Paolo Marinou-Blanco’s satirical black comedy imagines a motivational seminar to help the terminally ill end their lives

A famous Bob Dylan verse relates that “he not busy being born is busy dying”. And the primary characters of Paolo Marinou-Blanco’s Dreaming of Lions [+see also:
interview: Paolo Marinou-Blanco
film profile] take that sentiment literally: plagued by terminal illnesses, they plot and scheme to end their lives, only to discover further existential barriers. So, enter the creepy “dying” consultants Joy Transition International, of the Portuguese director’s own invention, although their intricate services are another bureaucratic hurdle. Chancy in its comic target, yet always meaning well – if not proving funny or insightful enough – Marinou-Blanco’s second feature, following the well-received Goodbye Irene almost two decades ago, premiered as the opening film of the Tallinn Black Nights Critics’ Picks Competition.

This writer has covered film long enough to see Yorgos Lanthimos replace Charlie Kaufman as the key reference point for high-concept surrealism, and as it happens, in Dreaming of Lions, Joy Transitional International is a sketchy self-help organisation inspired by The Lobster [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Yorgos Lanthimos
film profile]’s cursed coupling institute. Gilda (Brazilian actress Denise Fraga) is a former teacher and translator stricken by astrocytoma, a brain cancer that causes episodes of paralysis as it spreads, and whose three failed suicide attempts (cheerily related in fourth wall-breaking voice-over) have brought her to the aforementioned organisation’s door. Also at the institute is Amadeu (João Nunes Monteiro), a young man working as a mortician, orphaned when his parents tragically died in a “selfie-related accident” (a welcome bit of Spinal Tap-esque humour, indicating the story’s near-future setting), who also suffers from a brain tumour and is now beside Gilda in the rickety conference-room seating. Away from the contrived and arbitrary comic writing of the institute scenes, Marinou-Blanco achieves more success exploring their unlikely bond, first as co-conspirators and allies aiming to leave this world, and then more tenderly as lovers, basking in their shared tragic situation with the end nigh.

Hovering above this speculative scenario are society’s changing attitudes to euthanasia; indeed, last year saw its legalisation in Portugal, whilst debates on the UK’s Assisted Dying Bill dominate headlines domestically. What feels subversively black comic is that Amadeus and Gilda appear clinically depressed as well as often in unbearable physical pain; Marinou-Blanco gets at something by provocatively probing death’s sorrowful appeal, for those seriously contemplating it. But the equally vague and broad aspects of the institute are an issue, their life coach-style pablum taking up the “Joy” quotient, with infantilising “smile” face masks on hand, whilst the “Transition” aspect only gently suggests what might have occurred to their sign-ups already. Recalling Lanthimos, the restrictive obstacles imposed on his characters come from real life’s humiliations; here, the organisation’s conceptual slenderness is such that other directors would devote one joke or sight-gag to it, rather than the narrative’s first two acts.

Dreaming of Lions lives and plays in the wreckage of taboos long-ago broken; ever since the New Hollywood comedy Harold and Maude, failed suicide attempts have oddly been a typical dark-humour standby, and Marinou-Blanco constantly shocking us this way feels stale. But as the world gradually prepares for assisted dying methods to be more accessible, their mere availability requires psychological adjustment on our part. The end may seem desirable, until we’re right on its very threshold.

Dreaming of Lions is a co-production of Portugal, Brazil and Spain, staged by Promenade, Darya Films, Capuri and Cinètica Produccions.