Film info: Guerra civil

Film Information

Original Title	Guerra civil
English Title	Civil War
Director	Pedro Caldas
Country
Year	2010
Format	35 mm
Colour	Color
Duration	94 min

Cast:

Francisco Belard, Maria Leite, Catarina Wall

Production:

Guión: Pedro Caldas, João Gusmão
Fotografía: Leonardo Simões
Montaje: Nelly Quettier
Producción: João Figueiras

Synopsis

It’s the summer of ’82 on a beach in Southern Portugal. There’s Rui, an almost autistic teenager who listens to Joy Division, draws when he should be studying, and has a white mouse as his only friend; there’s also his mother Helena, who scolds him not so much out of anger as for the nerves from the affaire she’s having with a young man. Rui waits for his father solely because he will bring him a record player needle; Helena waits for her husband, and worries about the end of her affair. And there’s also Joana, a free-spirited girl, maybe too pretty, with too much character and too many friends for the shy Rui. Caldas’ film is first told from the viewpoint of the boy, then switches to his mother’s, and builds among the Portuguese beaches, trees and sun, a luminous portrait of some rather dark characters who can’t communicate with each other or move away from their loneliness, and who find out in fright that love, its absence, or whatever it is that they’re feeling, will tear them apart in the end.