Eccentricities of a Blond Haired Girl
Jul 23 - Jul 29, 2010
(Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, Spain, France, 2009, 35mm, 64 min)
Seattle Premiere
For his 100th birthday, director Manoel de Oliveira gave us a present with this marvelous adaptation of a novel by his Portuguese countryman Eça de Queiroz. Eccentricities is a wry, moving tale of a pure, if frustrated, love.
A young, Lisbon accountant, Macario, tells the story of the greatest but most tragic love of his life. He spies a young woman sitting by a window fanning herself. Soon the two are engaged, but his uncle opposes the match and the wedding is called off. Years later, Macario is again intent on marriage. Will fate this time deal him a kinder hand?
Using his trademark, highly theatrical style, Oliveira brilliantly juxtaposes the rigor of Queiroz’s prose with seething passions lurking beneath his story. “Romance,” according to Macario, “begins in art and reality.” Here Oliveira chronicles how memories become fiction and occasionally, art.
"Breathes the air of a dreamy, timeless romanticism" —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
"Wonderful" —Manohla Dargis, NY Times
