Both a romance and a ghost story, Manoel de Oliveira’s “The Strange Case of Angelica” tells its tale of love and death with a captivating mix of formality, ambiguity and offbeat humor. On the surface a simple fable, it’s actually much more.
The film has the lucidity and seeming straightforwardness one might expect of a veteran filmmaker, and that’s certainly what Oliveira is. He directed his first feature in 1942, and made this film last year at age 101. He came up with the screenplay that developed into this movie in 1952, so he’s had plenty of time to think about it.
A young photographer, Isaac (Ricardo Trêpa), living in a boardinghouse in Portugal’s Douro vineyard country, is summoned one rainy night to a rich family’s estate to photograph Angelica (Pilar Lopez de Ayala), a young bride who has died on her wedding day. She’s an ethereal beauty, posed in archaic fashion on a fainting couch, wearing her wedding dress and holding a bouquet.
After a startling incident — possibly imagined? — Isaac becomes obsessed with Angelica, who in one remarkable scene visits him in ghostly form — perhaps it’s a dream — and takes him on a fantastical airborne journey over the nighttime countryside. The special effect is unpolished in a way that suggests the early days of filmmaking.
Other events take place. We see Isaac, whose Jewishness seems to put off Angelica’s kin, photographing vineyard workers, and we hear oblique and comical conversations of fellow boarders and the sturdy woman who runs the boardinghouse. All think Isaac is behaving a little strangely.
But the heart of the tale is the relationship of Isaac, who seems half in another world himself, and Angelica’s spirit. The artist and outsider is totally captivated by the dead woman and drawn into her world.
Oliveira employs a quiet, seemingly straightforward style that uses tableaux and a minimum of camera movement, fitting for a story about a photographer. The film is beautifully shot by Sabine Lancelin.
Some of the boardinghouse chat goes on too long, and Trêpa (who happens to be the director’s grandson) isn’t the world’s strongest actor.
If certain moments in “The Strange Case of Angelica” remind you of Buñuel’s work, it’s not your imagination. Oliveira is an admirer of the great Spanish filmmaker, to the extent of having directed a sequel to his “Belle de Jour.”
“The Strange Case of Angelica.”
Not rated. 1 hour, 35 minutes. Directed by Manoel de Oliveira; starring Ricardo Trêpa, Pilar Lopez de Ayala, Leonor Silveira. In Portuguese with subtitles. Opens today at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax.
