TIFF ’09 Review: ‘Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl’

“Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl,” 100 year-old Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira’s latest and quite likely last directorial effort (how much work do you think you’ll be doing following your first centennial?), unfurls briskly and delicately, like a great short story, over the course of an economic 64 minute run time during which not a frame is wasted and each sequence is impeccably composed and choreographed. The film is adapted from a short story of the same name by 19th century realist author Eca de Queiroz (“The Crime of Padre Amaro”), and is considered by Oliveira to be an homage to the writer, updating the material to present day, but composing the film in a very classical way, with Oliveira’s trademark long takes and minimalist plotting.

The film begins on a train, as young and handsome Macario (Ricardo Trepa) engages in a conversation with the woman sitting to his right. He tells her of his life as an accountant, working at his father’s clothing store, and of the titular blond, Luisa (Caterina Wallenstein), who beguiled him with her exotic Chinese fan as she sat temptingly in the window adjacent to his own. In the story, it takes a mutual friend to finally introduce Macario to Luisa who, it turns out, returns his affection. They meet at a party, where a man recites a poem and his words resonate throughout ‘Eccentricities.’ His verse concerns a man of virtue, who wants only what he needs and knows that to desire more is to be unhappy. Shortly after the party, Macario decides to wed Luisa, but when his uncle gives him an ultimatum – stay single, or lose your job and home – Macario chooses his lover, and must look for work elsewhere; and when he’s unable to find any, he becomes impoverished and too ashamed to ask for Luisa’s hand. Finally, Macario is offered an undisclosed assignment in Cape Verde, where he’s promised he can make a small fortune.

That’s roughly 40 minutes of the film’s 64. The last 20 or so brings some surprises and while revealing them certainly wouldn’t ruin the film, to experience ‘Eccentricities’ unexpected conclusion and utterly haunting, soon-to-be-legendary, final shot yourself is something we wouldn’t deprive you of.

Leave it to a director from another era to so well capture ours; this socioeconomic fable is so in tune with the current global climate that it’s a wonder it seems so vintage. Oliveira is able to infuse the film with class tension and the pressures of familial expectation, themes very much linked to his own generation, and modernize them, finding the role they play today. Further, he bests Jason Reitman’s similarly themed Toronto favorite “Up in the Air,” which uses the slimming job market largely as window-dressing for its otherwise straightforward rom-com template. Here, Oliveira gives his commentaries a weight visible in the characters eyes, the weight of financial instability and the gravity of its consequences. It’s no wonder why Oliveira is so revered among devoted art house audiences, and though that’s partly because of his status as the only living filmmaker from the silent era, the less novel reason is that he’s a disciplined and intelligent formalist who deserves to be mentioned with Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette as one of the last living masters of their era. [A] –Sam C. Mac