(Bad Living)
Five women are running an old hotel, trying to save it from inexorable decay. A long-standing, perhaps irreparable, conflict weighs down on them: they are mothers who are unable to love their daughters, who in turn are unable to be mothers.
Author
João Canijo
With
Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida, Vera Barretо
Duration
127 min
Country
Portugal / France
Year
2003
language
Portuguese, Subtitles: English, German
When the young Salomé arrives at the hotel, old wounds are reopened. Caught between resentment and the search for a way out, her mother makes a drastic decision. João Canijo constructs a space that seems to absorb the characters’ states of mind.
Like a Strindberg play dark images and twilight colours reflect the ritual nature of gestures and the complexity of relationships. What are we and what do we become when the past looms and the present seems to offer no way out?
Canijo does not provide one answer but instead multiplies the points of view, creating a structure that takes into account the different human beings who pass through interpretations of time and space.
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He began his career as an assistant director for Manoel de Oliveira, Wim Wenders, Alain Tanner and Werner Schroeter. His debut feature film Três menos eu opened the 1988 International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Since then, he has made over ten feature films which have regularly screened in the official selections at Cannes, Venice and Toronto. Sangue do meu sangue won awards including the FIPRESCI prize at San Sebastián and the Grand Jury Prize at the Miami Film Festival.
His work has been honoured with retrospectives in cities including Busan, La Rochelle and Buenos Aires.
1985
Três menos eu (Three Less Me)
1997
Sapatos pretos (Black Shoes)
2000
Ganhar a vida (Get A Life)
2003
Noite escura (In the Darkness of the Night)
2007
Mal nascida (Misbegotten
2010
Fantasia lusitana (Lusitania Illusion)
2013
E`o amor (That’s Love)
2017
Diáro das Beiras (Diary of Beiras)
2023
Mal Viver (Bad Living)