O curta é inspirados na “nova onda” do cinema francês dos anos 60, mais especificamente nos filmes de Jean Luc Godard, como “O Desprezo”.
O filme conta a história de André, um rapaz prestes a pedir a mão de sua namorada em casamento, mas por um descuído acaba confundindo o nome de sua amada com um outro nome. Agora, André tem que procurar em sua mente quem seria essa tal de Camille que ele acaba de chamar.

O filme tem aproxiamdamente 8 minutos de duração e conta com atuações e fotografia incrível.

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Different from many of my classmates, and my teacher, I loved persona. The fact that I was warned to not use my technical side of the brain, but to use my creative side, had a major influence in how I watched the film. I had in my mind that I should not try to make a logic out of the things, I simply should “go with it”, and that’s exactly what I did. And you know what? By doing that I completely understood the movie and the story behind it.

The movie is really vague, and pretty much only one character talks during the film. The movie is open to interpretations, and I’m going to describe my own. For me, the movie is about an actress that got really connected with a character that she recent portrayed. Due to that fact, she starts to lose conscience of who she really is, and starts to live her life as if the other character is alive and trying to take over her. She than moves to a house to isolate herself from the rest of the World just to try to get her mind back together. Some clues during the movie is that someone (?) is shooting a film on a beach. There’s a cameraman and a director directing the sea. Besides that, the main actress is an actress, and Persona stands for a mask or appearance one presents to the world. By the way, in theater, Persona is a social role or a character played by an actor.

Overall I had the feeling that I got smarter while I watched the film. I loved that sensation! Ingmar Bergman is truly a great director, who was sure of every single frame that he wanted, and he could capture my attention during the entire film. The cinematography is beautiful, I couldn’t take my eyes of the screen, I wanted to observe the characters even when they wouldn’t say anything.

Persona is one of those films that I had to do a lot of Internet researches in order to get more out of the movie. Watching the movie wasn’t just enough for me, I had to learn more about this art piece that Bergman gave to the World.

That Obscure Object of Desire
France/Spain – 1977
Director: Luis Buñuel

That Obscure Object of Desire quickly entered on my TOP 10 favorites list at the exact moment it ended.  Luis Buñel just proves to be a great storyteller, but he doesn’t lose his surrealistic elements. The film tells the story of the dysfunctional relationship between Mathieu and Conchita.

The entire film is pretty much a Flashback, Mathieu is telling the story of his relationship while traveling on a train. The story that he is telling is pretty linear and easy to follow, but Luis Buñel used his surrealistic personality to show the bipolarity of Conchita. Conchita is played by two different actresses throughout the movie. The two actresses are not only physically different from each other, but they also have completely different temperaments, which contributed to make the movie more interesting and unique than anything I’ve ever seen before.

The relationship that the main characters share goes from romantic dinners to violent situations.  Mathieu is an older guy, but he is the most immature of the relationship, which is representing all real life men. When a man falls in love, he suddenly becomes a immature and spoiled little kid. Mathieu has obscures desires by Conchita, some desires are extremely crazy and morally wrong… but every single desire that he has is true and believable.

On the background there’s the story of terrorists bombing and shooting random places for random reasons. Every time that a television is on, it is showing a recent terrorist attack. Sometimes, a few things just suddenly blow up on the screen. Those attacks are pretty much a metaphor for Love. Everything might seem right, but it all can explode in the blink of an eye.

I felt really sorry by Mathieu character, but I could understand his obsession for Conchita. I felt in love by the “two” Conchitas. Each one of them are unique and have characteristics that made me fall for them, every time a different Conchita was on the screen, I founded something different, and felt more in love by this character, who in my opinion, is one of the most memorable character in Film History.

The Double Life of Veronique
France/Poland – 1991
Director: Krzysztof  Kieslowski

The Double Life of Veronique has a very interesting concept: Living two different lives at the same time. Irène Jacob is the main actress and she plays two girls who share the same name (Veronique and Weronika) and pretty much the same emotions, but they live in two completely different places (France and Poland). Throughout the movie they only see each other at one point, and they don’t even realize that they have meet their other “half”.

The movie uses elements of Fantasy, resembling sometimes a Fairy Tale. I’m not even going to say that it resembles a dark fairy tale, because some of the moments of the film are extremely cute and magical, and the cinematography (like the Puppet Show scene, for example) somehow made me remind of the movie “The Little Princess”. I believe that happened because of the color balance, the telephoto lenses and the use of warm colors. The movie has some dark themes and aspects, but the director didn’t go deeper on those themes, he concentrated on creating a feeling of “experimenting the unknown without fear”.

Music is a very important aspect on both Veronique’s lives. The soundtrack of the film was really good, and each of the songs represents a different mood for the main character.

Even though the two characters have pretty much the same life, I was way more interested on Weronika’s story than on Veronique. I felt like Weronika had many more struggles and many more flaws that I wish the director could elaborate more. I got really disappointed due to the fact that the film concentrates on telling Veronique story, and not Weronika.

Watching the film for a second time was easier to me and I could care a little more about Veronique, but overall I must say that I got disappointed during some moments of the film. The film has a great idea and a theme (supernatural/fantasy) that is one of my favorites, and I can’t why I didn’t get much involved with it.

M
Germany – 1931
Director: Fritz Lang

I’ve seen Fritz Lang’s “M” before, but I’ve never actually analyzed the movie. I didn’t remember that “M” uses both, Silent Film Language and Sound to tell the story of a brutal serial killer from the streets of Berlin. I know that this is the first Fritz Lang movie with sound, and I believe that he made a stupendous job by still using elements from Silent Movies. The first scene that shows a child murder is the perfect example of Lang’s geniality. By using montage and great juxtaposition between images, the first sequence is one of the best moments in film history.

“M” has very dark themes, such as pedophilia. Even nowadays is really hard to see a movie that shows a criminal who is a pedophile, and I believe that back in the days the theme used with more caution (another movie that has a particular short-scene evolving a pedophile is “The Bicycle Theft”).

“M” has a lot of characteristics of a “Noir” film. I know that many things, one of those things being the German expressionism, influenced Noir films, but “M” has more “noirish” characteristics. Dark shadows, detectives, brutally realistic crimes. I believe that the truly birth of the Noir Films happened in “M”.

Peter Lorre does such a tremendous job as the pedophile serial killer. It’s funny to know that he started basically as a comedian actor. The song that his character whistles scared me for a while after I watched the movie. I thought that it was really cleaver that whenever we heard the song being whistled, we knew that the murder was around and the he was about to show up. This was great, and it kind of reminded me of  Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill”.

On Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt”, Fritz Lang affirms that “M” is his favorite movie directed by himself. I’m a big fan of “Metropolis”, but I must agree with him. “M” is one of the greatest movies of all time. The last scene of the movie at the court house is an example of that. Peter Lorre’s monologue about “The voice inside of me told me to do that…” is really powerful. The accusations about the judges show that everyone has its secrets. “M” really is one the greatest movies ever made.