Continuing to build the fictional universe of Nicolau, which he has developed since the character's childhood through a series of short films, Portuguese filmmaker João Rosas arrives in Karlovy Vary's Crystal Globe Competition with his first feature, The Luminous Life [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film]. A seductively easy piece of cinema to watch, it is also lightly subversive in its treatment of the cinematic language, in addition to using a bunch of meta references.

It is spring in Lisbon, and Nicolau (Francisco Melo) is not exactly celebrating his 24th birthday. Depressed because of the breakup of a long relationship a year earlier, he lives with his parents, plays bass in a jazz band that seems to be going nowhere and is generally disinterested in getting a job, to expected nagging from his father. He does pick up a part-time thing every now and then, and one day, when he's counting bicycles in the city for a social mobility scheme, he spots a young woman who looks exactly like his ex-girlfriend. She drops the bulletin of Lisbon's famed Cinemateca, with screenings circled in red, providing a “map to the treasure”, as his best friend, Mariana (Francisca Alarcão), puts it.

This, and another event, nudges him to do something with his life, so he moves out of his parents’ place and gets a room in a shared flat, with three women slightly older than him. A job at a bookshop comes along, courtesy of his dad, and so does a potential relationship with a French girl (Cécile Matignon) he met on his birthday.

People come and go and sometimes return to Nicolau’s life, some of them from France or Spain, in a kind of free flow that is reflected in the rhythm of the film. The easy-going, steady editing by Luís Miguel Correia fits the atmosphere of Lisbon, the other main protagonist of the film. Paulo Menezes lenses classically, letting the city’s irresistibly shabby charm and the warm light of the interiors paint the picture, along with the naturalistic sound design. The music is strictly diegetic, coming from Nicolau’s band, except in one instance when their guitar phrase colours a transition. 

There’s a lot of talking in the film, which, together with the vibe and setting, harks back to the Nouvelle Vague, especially Rohmer, and it’s about serious topics: love, death, capitalism, architecture, environment, patriarchy and precarity of work. But these are discussed by side characters as comments on what’s happening in the story, often through direct quotes from philosophers, just as emotions are named and described but never really acted out. Bresson would be proud, as referenced by a film critic at the Cinemateca who only speaks in the French icon’s quotes. Rosas adds another self-referential meta-layer in a cameo as a film director who frequents the bookshop, complaining how his film about young people in the city was misunderstood. It is all played lightly tongue-in-cheek, and similar is the approach to a few twists that intentionally never play out as key developments in the plot. 

The Luminous Life is a co-production between Portugal’s Midas Filmes and France’s Les Films de l'Après-Midi. Loco Films has the international rights.