Um Adeus Português

Eleven years after the revolution (which remains unmentioned), this is the first Portuguese feature to grapple with the Colonial War (1961–1974) as a collective repressed past. Two aesthetically distinct narrative threads alternate: a troop of young soldiers can be seen in black and white wandering through the forest in an African country in 1973 when a deadly shot rings out. The scenes from the 1973 war are contrasted with the strong colors used to depict the dead soldier’s parents visit to Lisbon from the north of Portugal in 1985, where they meet their second son and widowed daughter-in-law. Their encounters are marked by silence and an inability to reach an agreement about loss and grief – a lack of communication that the film also detects at a national level. (bik)