Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 26/11/2016)

Survival afloat is also one of the themes in an hour-long episode from Joana Pontes's acclaimed documentary series, The Portuguese XX Century: The End of the Empire (2002), which draws on a range of primary and secondary materials to chronicle the 1975 colonial exodus from an Angola on the verge of civil war that saw hundreds seeking to flee along dangerous roads or in rickety boats. The same conflict is also to the fore in Ivo M. Ferreira's Letters From War (2016), which is Portugal's entry for the Best Foreign Film category at next year's Academy Awards. Photographed in black and white by João Ribeiro, the action harks back to the early 1970s and examines the failing dictatorship's attitude to the crisis in eastern Angola through the letters sent by António Lobo Antunes (Miguel Nunes) to his first wife, Maria Jose Xavier da Fonseca e Costa (Margarida Vila-Nova), after he is drafted to serve as a military doctor.

In 1989, João César Monteiro created his alter ego, João de Deus, for Recollections of the Yellow House. He would play the character again in A Comédia de Deus (1995), As Bodas de Deus (1999) and Anthero - O Palácio da Ventura (2009). But his first appearance remains the most vivid in a picture that took the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. Trained in London in the early 1960s, Monteiro worked as a film critic while making shorts like Who Waits for the Deceased's Shoes Dies Barefoot (1971), which established his reputation for poetic idiosyncrasy and a self-reflexive irreverence that invariably provoked controversy. His feature breakthrough came with Fragmentos de um Filme Esmola: A Sagrada Família (1972), which he followed with Silvestre (1981) and À Flor do Mar (1986), which respectively marked the debut of the remarkable Maria de Medeiros and starred the redoubtable Laura Morante.

But Monteiro made his mark with this teasing study of life in a Lisbon boarding house, which opens with fiftysomething João de Deus (Monteiro) lamenting the presence of bedbugs in the guest house run with grim efficiency by the formidable Dona Violeta (Mauelade Freiras). He is also stricken with a severe pain that requires him to ice his troublesome testicles. The doctor (Antonio Terrinha) informs him that he has a vitamin deficiency and urges him to eat more. But João rarely has time for food between borrowing money off his septuagenarian cleaner mother (Maria Ângela de Oliveira), cadging cigarettes off strangers or fixating on Violeta's daughter, Julieta (Teresa Calado).

She has just joined the military and Violeta has high hopes that her time in the base band will help her become a famous clarinettist and find her a rich husband. João listens to her with an ecstasy that is only exceeded by the keyhole sight of her bathing and the taste of the soapy water that he laps from the tub. But, while he is besotted with Julieta (and venerates one of her public hairs like a saintly relic), João is not above seeking solace with Mimi (Sabina Sacchi), a naive Brazilian prostitute who lives in the same building before she dies following a botched abortion and leaves her savings stuffed inside a rag doll. However, João is forced to leave after he fails to produce a sample bedbug and, after enduring the taunts of strangers in the street and briefly finding himself behind bars for impersonating a cavalry officer, he finds himself rushing around the courtyard in despairing confusion after being confined in the Miguel Bombarda asylum.

Abetted by production designer Luís Monteiro and cinematographer José António Loureiro, Monteiro achieves a palpable sense of place and atmosphere in the narrow streets of Lisbon's old port. But it's the shabby propriety of the boarding-house that exposes the foibles of Monteiro and his fellow residents. His seedy pursuit of Calado is particularly unsettling, but he claws back some sympathy with his dogged determination to present Freiras with the insects he believes are causing the rash covering his torso.

The stylisation is even more pronounced in Rita Azevedo Gomes's A Woman's Revenge (2011), an adaptation of the short story `Les Diaboliques' from an 1874 anthology by Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly that seems to have much in common with Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais (2007) and Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon (2010). Meticulously paced and played with simmering intensity on exquisitely theatrical sets, this feels like a modern variation on the films d'art that prompted the introduction of feature-length films in the 1910s. However, Gomes also finds room for some acerbic asides to contemporary attitudes towards women and Portugal's colonial past.

Wandering backstage like the star's dresser, the narrator (João Pedro Bénard) introduces the audience to Roberto (Fernando Rodrigues), an inscrutable libertine who has grown tired of polite Lisbon society. He takes a stroll in the square and doesn't have a good word for anyone he spies taking the evening air. His mood scarcely improves at a soirée, where he kisses the hostess (Isabel Ruth) when she sneaks out of a musical presentation to join him as he smokes. But his spirits perk up when Henrique (Francisco Nascimento) suggests they go for supper.

As Roberto describes his recent adventures abroad, the pair are watched with disdain by an elegant older woman (Isabel Ruth). But, while they barely notice her, they fall silent when a woman in a hooded cloak (Rita Durão) makes a dramatic entrance. Intrigued, Roberto follows her into the street and she leads him to an upper-storey apartment in a nearby building. As he places coins in her money tin, the courtesan begins to flirt with him and he waits patiently in the red-walled antechamber as she prepares in her boudoir.

The camera fixes on her tear-filled eyes as Roberto takes his pleasure. But he notices that she is clutching a portrait bearing the ribbon of the Golden Fleece. He recognises this as a mark of high-ranking Spanish nobility and she reveals that she is Sanzia, Duchess D'Arcos of Sierra Leone. But, while she once bore his name with a pride she felt only for her own Italian family, she now detests her husband with a ferocity that can never be doused until she has exacted her revenge.

Roberto listens in stunned silence, as Sanzia explains how she was living on their colonial estate when Don Christoval (Hugo Tourita) introduced her to his cousin, Don Estêvão, Marquis of Albuquerque (Duarte Martins). She had sensed something between them at first glance and had urged her husband to send Estêvão away. But he had mocked her concern by scoffing that his guest would never dare cuckold him and this so stung Sanzia (who deeply resented being a possession rather than a spouse) that she responded to Estêvão's flirtation while she was doing some needlework.

However, Christoval discovered their innocent dalliance and had one of his African servants shoot Estêvão with a bow and arrow and cut out his heart to feed to the dogs. Sanzia had pressed the heart to her chest and shows Roberto the bloodied dress she has since refused to wash because its stains rekindle the loathing she feels towards her husband. Dismayed by the savagery of her tale, Roberto asks how she intends to settle her score and Sanzia replies that a quick death is too good for a duke whose lineage is purer than that of the royal house. Instead, she intends prostituting herself and making sure that everyone she sleeps with knows her history so that news of her debasement will eventually reach Don Christoval and cut deeper than any blade could hope to do.

Feeling a mixture of pity and revulsion, Roberto takes his leave (spotting a notice on the front door advertising Sanzia's sexual services) and makes immediate plans to leave Lisbon. On his return, he attends a function at the Spanish embassy and overhears a diplomat relaying the news that the Duchess D'Arcos has died. Leaving the gathering, Roberto hastens to the church where Sanzia's coffin is lying in a side chapel.

Having placed a single red rose on the casket, he asks the duty priest (Manuel Mozos) about the deceased and he reveals that she was a prostitute who made no secret of her high birth. However, she had contracted a frightful disease that caused one eye to fall out and the other to turn to mush. Remaining wealthy, she had left everything she owned to charity, but insisted that her headstone should read beneath her formal titles that she was an unrepentant harlot. The priest asks Roberto if he had any idea why, but he merely turns on his heel and leaves.

Played with fiery fury by Rita Durão, this is a compelling treatise on the chauvinism and hypocrisy that underpinned supposedly polite society. But, for all the pertinence of the themes, it's the audacity of the staging that makes the deepest impression. The sequences in the Lisbon square and the African plantation are so beautifully designed by Pedro Sá and lit by Acácio de Almeida that their painterly artifice captivates, while the grace with which the scenes flow into one another shows a real mastery of the mise-en-scène technique. The approach may not be entirely unique, but it's well suited to this kind of chamber drama and Azevedo Gomes applies it to perfection.

Until recently, most British cineastes would mention Manoel De Oliveira, João César Monteiro, Pedro Costa or João Botelho if asked to name a Portuguese director. But Miguel Gomes has helped raise the profile of Lusophonic cinema in this country with such exceptional pictures as Our Beloved Month of August (2008), Tabu (2012) and Arabian Nights, a 2015 triptych comprising Volume 1: The Restless One, Volume 2: The Desolate One and Volume 3: The Enchanted One. But Utopia opts to focus on Tabu, a lyrical masterpiece that doubles as a challenging treatise on the past.

Opening with a 35mm segment captioned `A Lost Paradise', the action begins in a Yuletide Lisbon, as devout Catholic Teresa Madruga compensates for the recent departure of a Polish lodger by fussing over elderly neighbour Laura Soveral. Showing signs of dementia, she lives with Cape Verdean maid Isabel Cardoso, who is paid for by Soveral's otherwise neglectful daughter. When not taking language classes, Cardoso dotes on her mistress and is repaid by accusations of imprisonment that Madruga takes with a pinch of salt, even when she rescues Soveral from a casino where she claims that Cardoso has used voodoo witchcraft to curse her luck on the fruit machines.

However, Madruga is sufficiently intrigued by Soveral's insistence she has blood on her hands to agree to deliver a letter to white-haired retirement home resident Henrique Espirito Santo. As the stock changes to 16mm and the stilted declamation of the early scenes gives way to a lyrical voiceover, the `Paradise' section begins with Espirito Santo revealing that the younger Soveral (Ana Moreira) lived in an African colony not unlike Mozambique with her husband, Ivo Müller, a legendary big-game hunter with a sprawling farm in the foothills of Mount Tabu. A crack shot herself, Moreira seems to have an idyllic lifestyle, as she accompanies Müller on his expeditions and enjoys playing the hostess as much as she is excited about the imminent birth of their first child.

But Müller is an inconsiderate lover and, thus, from the moment she sets eyes on Italian visitor Carloto Cotta, Moreira is besotted and struggles to keep her passion under control. The feeling is entirely mutual. But, as Cotta plays in a pop group that specialises in Phil Spector covers, he is also beholden to manager Manuel Mesquita, who trained for the priesthood before succumbing to his homosexual urges. Their relationship complicates the liaison and Moreira and Cotta try to restrain themselves. But their ardour proves too strong and the consequences can only be tragic.

As with much Portuguese cinema, this is a demanding watch. Acknowledging his debt to FW Murnau by naming his eccentric heroine Aurora after the German's 1927 Hollywood classic Sunrise and inverting the chapter headings of his final feature Tabu (1931), Gomes (who started out as a critic) often seems to be pastiching the styles of the early sound and silent eras. He may well also be referencing Sacha Guitry's endlessly innovative 1936 saga, The Story of a Cheat, which also made inspired use of an off-screen narrator. But, while the first half of the picture is laced with playful wit, the second is so achingly exquisite that it can only be seen as a sincere homage to the melodramas of yesteryear. Notwithstanding comparisons with Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, the tone is closer to Guy Maddin or Pedro Almodóvar reworking Douglas Sirk or Rainer Werner Fassbinder and cineastes will revel in the mellifluousness of Espirito Santo's narration and the shimmering beauty of Rui Pocas's crisp, Academy ratio monochrome images.

Such is Gomes's control that a version of `Be My Baby' that initially sounds risibly kitschy acquires a new-found poignancy worthy of Jerome Kern or Irving Berlin at their best when played in a second context. His direction of the cast is equally astute, with the almost robotic line readings of Madruga, Soveral and Cardoso giving way to the sublime pantomime of Moreira and Cotta, whose resemblance to a young Clark Gable or Errol Flynn is gleefully anachronistic considering his flashback occurs in the 1960s rather than the 1930s. And where else have two watchful crocodiles seemed so affectingly melancholic?

Always as likely to infuriate as delight, Tabu is a boldly stylised riposte to the dour realism of so much arthouse cinema and the CGI-strewn escapism of so many blockbusters. Managing to be both modern and nostalgic in discussion of colonialism, religion, sexuality and the role of women, it also reminds us of forgotten techniques and approaches to storytelling, while also insisting that they retain a relevance and value beyond the quaint or the parodic.

Finally, Manuel Mozos follows the example of Jacques Richard's Henri Langlois: The Phantom of the Cinémathèque (2004) and Shivendra Singh Dungarpur's PK Nair profile, Celluloid Man (2012), to pay fulsome tribute to actor-cineaste João Bénard da Costa in Others Will Love the Things That I Have Loved (2014), which not only recalls the parts Da Costa played for directors like Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro, but also celebrates his the 18 years he spent as director of the Cinemateca Portuguesa before his death in 2009. Drawing on extracts from the 1990 volume, The Films of My Life (which are read by Da Costa's actor son, João Pedro Bénard), this is as much a considered reflection on life as it is a celebration of cinema. But Mozos makes affecting use of the landscape around Sintra, Lisbon and Arrábida and the clips from Da Costa's favourite films, which are mostly presented over the shoulder of an unnamed figure watching at an editing desk.

Born on 7 February 1935, Da Costa had a happy childhood and thanks his parents for buying the book of paintings that shaped his taste and the school principal who steered him through his examinations and allowed him to teach a film class after he graduated. In 1963, he founded the magazine O Tempo e o Modo, which followed the example of Cahiers du Cinéma in attempting to present a serious analysis of the latest releases and artistic trends. Da Costa was bewitched by Hollywood and wrote monographs on Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg and Howard Hawks, as well as Luis Buñuel and the state of Portuguese cinema. But Da Costa did his bit for the national industry, both at the Cinemateca and as an occasional actor (often using the name Duarte de Almeida).

Alongside clips from works by his most regular collaborators - Raul Ruiz's Love Torn in a Dream (2000) and De Oliveira's Magic Mirror (2005) - Mozos also includes stills and extracts from such fetishised favourites as Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947), William Dieterle's Portrait of Jennie (1948), Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954) and Bitter Victory (1957), Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955) and Vincente Minnelli's Gigi (1958).

The latter sequence of Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold performing `I Remember It Well' rather sums up this mix of enthusiasms and musings that also includes photos of Da Costa with such titans as Samuel Fuller, Kirk Douglas, Michel Piccoli, Lauren Bacall, Jane Russell and Catherine Deneuve, as well as family snapshots and a quotation from the poem `Sophia' by Da Costa's wife, Ana Maria Toscana. His ambition to introduce others to the things he had loved is admirable and should be shared by every critic, as cinema may be a solitary pursuit in the darkness, but it becomes communal with the analysis and debate that keeps it alive. But, sadly Mozos recognises that the golden age of cinephilia is over and the temples that once housed it are rarely filled with devotees as they once were. So, while this elegiac essay appears resigned to the fact that it will not come back from the dead like Inger Borgen, but will fade into the mist like Daniel Gregg and Lucy Muir.