Our Beloved Month of August (2008)

Just perfect...

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

One of the reasons some of us like to see foreign films is to be exposed to the differences of a culture we might not otherwise get to explore, and Our Beloved Month Of August is a prime example. The director Gomes (who plays himself) shows us disparate scenes full of local color in the mountain villages of Portugal, and the kinds of things people do there, juxtaposed with a documentary making-of in which characters comment on their roles. The camera, as in some of our modern art films, sometimes lingers on these incidents from a distance. A plot develops in which a family travels through this area as a pop band,and the tensions which develop. Although their music isn't all that good I especially liked the scenes in which the young hockey player Fabio Oliveira plays guitar in the band, in the story he plays the character Nelson Helder. His girlfriend is a fire lookout, and Gomes toys here with the cliché of the summer romance. Another character has a herniated disc but carries a heavy religious statue in a procession, and credits faith for healing him (!) later he's hired as an actor. An added theme is foreigners, relatives who come from France and tourist girls from Belgium who flirt. Besides mixing different kinds of footage Gomes also sometimes juxtaposes the sound from one place with the image from another, and uses stylized rather than realistic color for increased effect. I can't think of anything else I've seen that quite compares with this unusual movie, except that in its self-conscious playfulness it reminded me of the much earlier, and more theatrical, work of Sacha Guitry. If you've never seen a Portugese film, this might be the one to try first.

In the heat of August everything happens in rural mountainous Portugal: village parties and popular dances, processions, trains and pilgrimages,karaoke sessions, flirtations and love-making, bathing in the fluvial beach, the brass bands, the rock bands shows, the challenge singings with their waggeries, the boar hunt, the jumping into the river, the forest fires and the firemen and the coming of emigrants on holidays to their birthplace to enjoy and witness all this. And all this is shown on this movie in a cocktail of meaningful images and scenes and a pot-pourri of estival love songs, adopting an indiscreet camera style, here peering into real scenes and events and there picking up natural and spontaneous conversations, dialogues and speeches. In parallel with this documentary feature the movie has also a plot that is intentionally kept somewhat in the shade and that involves a father, a daughter and a nephew who form a ball music band. Their sentimental relations with each other degenerate sometimes into conflicts. In the end of the movie we watch a curious technical discussion by the team who made it. It's a cute movie (this is the adjective that better suits it) but a good one anyway.

I am aware that lately some movie directors use documentary and fiction in their films. Actually, almost everybody (critics and public) mentions that in what concerns this film, but for me that is the smallest part of what is important in "Aquele querido mês de Agosto". Its splendor and beauty results, in my opinion, in the adequate way how the plot's initial idea, such as the emotional connections among father, daughter and a cousin, elements of a popular band of musicians, are worked and manipulated making them extremely appropriated to the lyrics and sounds of songs of Portuguese popular music, which illustrate, interpret and emphasize their "soul" moods. And that occurs with no prejudices - this kind of music is generally associated with popular balls, to a "superficial" music made to dance, not to think about its contents. However a blogger wrote that this film is to watch and to "read".A critic also said that Miguel Gomes is not "deaf" to the images neither "blind" to the sounds and I agree with them.Besides a high sense of humor, not very common in the Portuguese cinematography, is another of the strengths of "Aquele querido mês de Agosto". The glare of this movie remains after we leave the cinema and we dream to live again another wonderful month of August.

Just forget all about globalization. Portugal and Portuguese movies are unique: you can see it in "Aquele querido mês de Agosto" (That dearest August month). In August those who live in big towns and the emigrants come back to their little villages, some foreigners appear as well and all this people join together with the (polyglote) locals. Little familiar bands play and sing for others to dance in the summer festivals and this popular songs become lovely when sang by the wonderful leading role actress. This film includes it's "making of" and plays with the idea of "how a Portuguese movie is made". It is funny, it is poignant, it is innocent and it is intelligent just like anyone. In this movie you can find all except bad taste. And Portuguese people can feel proud of being Portuguese!