Cinema
The Message
O Recado
José Fonseca e Costa · 1972
Synopsis
Lúcia belongs to Lisbon's high society. António, from the same milieu, courts her. Yet she keeps the memory of another man, Francisco, half outsider and half adventurer, long absent, who lets her know through a vagabond that he is coming back and gives her a rendezvous. Around them, a generation that was once in the Resistance and no longer is, and a political police that is spoken of only in veiled terms.
Context
It is the first fiction feature of its author, and one of the first produced by the film centre that the profession had just set up for itself, in coproduction with Spain. It dares to show the political police liquidating a resistance fighter, but in a form coded enough to pass: the point is diluted in two hours of ordinary conversations, and the censors let it out. Shown at San Remo in 1971, it was screened in Lisbon immediately afterwards to a large audience, and its impact led to the organisation in Nice of the first week of New Portuguese Cinema abroad.
Who it is for
A colour feature film, in Portuguese, of about two hours; the political message is buried beneath the conversation.
Prizes and reception
Honourable mention at the Italian festival where it was shown, and one of the representative titles of the New Cinema of its country.
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