The reviewr of The New York Times, Manohla Dargis, wrote the movie is "a meditation on movies, myths and memory". This may have been the beginning of the myth some people built around a film that according to its co-directors in various interviews, said (1) that the documentary thing was in an early script presented to obtain some funding; (2) that on location it was evident that the few child memories of one of them (the only one that lived some years in Macau) had vanished; that the opening singing act was an afterthought. A Portuguese spectator encapsulated the whole thing thus: It is not a movie, it's a thing. It seems that when the team went to Macau, they did not know what they were going to do. Well, it shows...
The movie synopsis lies blatantly, suggesting that the movie confronts memories of the 1970s Macau with the 2010s reality: the memories are reduced to a couple of sentences about landscape preserved by the Portuguese and Chinese authorities, and has nothing to do with the gloomy side of borderline towns, Asian or European alike. The authors have said that some scenes had been shot in Lisbon and Almada, Portugal.
A docudrama it is not! One of the co-directors, Guerra da Mata, actually lived his formative years in Macau, up to the 1970s; he opens the movie as the Narrator, by saying «Thirty years later I am on my way to Macau, where I had not been since childhood. I received an email in Lisbon, from Candy, of whom I had not heard for years. She told me that she had been with the wrong men again, and asked me to go to Macau, where strange and frightening things were happening. Tired, after a long flight, I arrive at Macao on the boat that will take me back to the happiest period of my life." Several film reviews take from here - and the fact that there is no fiction drama, or story - to categorize this as documentarist. It is not. The film could have been turned anywhere where there are somber streets, some litter on the pavement, dead rats, and stray cats and dogs. A few (very few) shots of casinos' neon ensigns, a Venetian gondolier that is a casino attraction, and a few (very few) photographs of Chinese banquets, are not enough. Later, when girls in uniform are leaving the Santa Rosa de Lima College, Guerra da Mata seems to regret that there are no boys now at the college he attended, missing the fact that the college had been a religious institution for girls since its foundation, had had major changes (even in the buildings it occupies), and that during Portuguese administration, separation of genders in school was the norm, with few exceptions.
Candy is no candy! The film opens with a transvestite in a shiny low-cut dress showing enhanced breasts, singing in playback. As the Narrator is attracted to Macau by a Candy, some viewers admit that Candy is that person, but no, that is Cindy Scrach who worked with these directors in Morrer como um homem.
Candy is actually named once, later in the movie, as Candida - a Portuguese name, and it's English abbreviation was deemed more appealing for the international film festivals and the world of casino's entertainment where the alleged drama takes place. Candy is presented as a McGuffin, as fake as the carved inscription in a bamboo trunk - that in closer inspection is a plank of wood shot in front of some bamboos. The end credits name Candy as an actor, and we know from interviews that it was the real name of Guerra da Mata's pet kitty - dead, and thus appearing in stock footage.
Halfway into the film the narrator comments how, after 400 years of Portuguese rule, there was no one able to speak Portuguese in Macau. Was it any different when he attended college, and lived there? His depictions of local life in Macau are stereotypical, vague, and sometimes inaccurate. I was put off by the fact that the copy of the movie shown at a special session had no subtitles for the
Cantonese dialogue - adding to my rejection of the vagrant succession of images with no sense at all; but one person who speaks the language has commented that the Cantonese dialogues are unnatural and seem to be an automatic translation of English phrases. For the Portuguese dialogue, I can say that it pretends to be mysterious and suspenseful, but it never gets up from dispassionate emptiness. Old photos shown and commented out of context are part of the same emotionless and flat.
The long paintball sequence between adults, in the beginning of the film, seems so unrelated to the story as the singing act by Cindy Stein. The bird cage with a cloth covering is not a McGuffin, it's co-director João Pedro adding his life interest to be an ornithologist and bird watcher - which he should have been, instead of going to a film school.
I loved the tiger images because they are so pretty, even when they are shown torn, and abandoned, filmed after the feast ends. But not even that is there with a narrative purpose, it happens the film was shot during the Gold Tiger year (Feb 14, 2010 - Feb 2, 2011). By the way, and totally off topic, according to the Asian horoscope under this sign the males are indecisive, stubborn, and feminized.
