Portuguese director João Canijo is in competition for the Golden Bear at the 73rd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) with “Mal vive”. competes in another category of the same event, an unusual event. With Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida and Vera Barreto, “Mal Viver” tells the story of three women — grandmother, daughter and granddaughter — who take care of a hotel in the north of Portugal and live steeped in resentments and unresolved family secrets. The daughter of the hotel’s founder is on the verge of suicide and her mother’s incomprehension seems to be passed on to her daughter. The dialogues intersect with fragments of conversations of the hotel’s guests, who suffer their own miseries. The second part, “Viver Mal”, takes up the secondary stories precisely, placing them in the foreground. Guests become protagonists and, in the background, as a familiar and at the same time intriguing scenario, these three women are trapped by their toxic relationship. The cast includes Nuno Lopes, Filipa Areosa, Leonor Silveira, Rafael Morais, Lia Carvalho, Beatriz Batarda, Leonor Vasconcelos and Carolina Amaral.
“Mal Viver”” data-title=”Portuguese director João Canijo’s inverted cinema arrives at the Berlin Festival – SAPO Mag”> “Mal Viver” Winner of the critics’ prize in San Sebastián in 2011 with “Sangue do meu Sangue”, Canijo recognizes that he is not at all optimistic when he approaches family relationships. “I don’t think there’s hope. I don’t believe in functional families. none”, said the director in an interview with France-Presse, before the premiere on Wednesday night in Berlin of “Mal Viver”. For Canijo, “grandmothers ruin their daughters’ lives and then these mothers will ruin his height, the lives of his daughters. It’s like that, a cycle that never ends”. He considers his double presence at the Berlinale “extraordinary”. Of the two, his favorite is the one competing for the Golden Bear. “Obviously”, he says. “Each one of them, in the official competition and in the Encounters section, has its place”, he says, with a proud smile. For the second part, Canijo was inspired by three plays by the Swede August Strindberg (1849-1912). A mother pressures her daughter to marry so she can continue sleeping with her son-in-law, a couple living between love and hate, and two young lesbians who can’t get rid of their mother’s shadow. one of them. In terms of toxicity, “I think that, today, homosexual couples are as normal as heterosexual ones, I don’t think there is a big difference”, he opines.
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Viver Mal” data-title=”Inverted cinema by Portuguese director João Canijo arrives at the Berlin Festival – SAPO Mag”> Viver Mal Another director is in contention for two different sessions in this edition of the Berlin Film Festival. The Iranian Mehran Tamadon competes with “Mon pire ennemi” (“My worst enemy”, in free translation), in the Encounters section, and with “Jaii keh khoda nist”, in the Forum section. They are, however, different stories, shot in different places.”Viver Mal” and “Mal Viver” were filmed simultaneously, during 12 weeks, in the same hotel: Hotel Parque do Rio, in Ofir.”When we were recording , we knew exactly what was inside one film and what was inside the other”, guarantees Canijo, adding that it was an authentic work of “chronological jewel”. There are few examples of similar dynamics in the history of cinema.Clint Eastwood filmed “Letters of Iwo Jima” and “The Flags of Our Country”, with the Japanese and American point of view, respectively, on the Battle of Iwo Jima, but separated by a two-month gap between 2005 and 2006. Ned Benson show two points of view on a couple’s relationship, her (Jessica Chastain) perspective in “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her” and his (James McAvoy) in “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him”. Despite the acclaim, the director decided to re-edit it as a single film, “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them”, which also had theatrical distribution in 2014.
