Cinema
The Other One
Conversa Acabada
João Botelho · 1981
Synopsis
At the beginning of the twentieth century, in a Portugal in crisis, two poet friends write to each other, Fernando Pessoa from Lisbon and Mário de Sá-Carneiro from Paris. They invent a language and a way of speaking it, read each other, correct each other, support each other from a distance, and pay the price of their adventure: one peoples his solitude with imaginary poets, the other writes in the vertigo of his poems and stories.
Context
The project was meant to be a documentary and became a fiction along the way; it nevertheless sticks strictly to the letters and writings exchanged by the two writers. The director made it almost alone, the producer Paulo Branco being one only in theory; Fernando Cabral Martins plays Pessoa, André Gomes Sá-Carneiro, and Juliet Berto has a role in it. The film was distributed in France under the title Moi, l'autre.
Who it is for
A feature film in Portuguese, of about an hour and forty minutes; almost everything in it is read or spoken, letters and writings, to the camera.
Prizes and reception
The first fiction feature of its director, and the first milestone of a cinema founded on texts, which became his hallmark.
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