-Wednesday, March 9 at 8 p.m.
-This year, the Cannes Festival has decided to support the release of films scheduled in their official selections.
Thus, “The Strange Case of Angelica” will be presented as a premiere and exclusively at Cinema Mercury.
The screening will be attended by Geneviève Pons-Cailloux*, head of the official selection “Un Certain Regard”.
-“The Strange Case of Angelica”, originally titled “O Estranho Caso de Angélica,” is the latest film by Portugal’s greatest director of all time, Manoel de Oliveira, aged 102.
This French-Spanish-Portuguese-Brazilian co-production features a cast including some of the best Lusophone actors of the moment: Pilar López de Ayala, Ricardo Trepa, Filipe Vargas…
In addition to Cannes, “The Strange Case of Angelica” has been presented at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Melbourne, New York, Toronto, Haifa, Hamburg, Mumbai, Oslo, and finally at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal.
“The Strange Case of Angelica” will be shown at the opening of the Lusophone Cinema week, on Wednesday, March 23 at 10 a.m., 2 p.m., and 8:30 p.m., and then the film will continue to be screened at the Mercury in the following weeks.
-Manoel Candio Pinto de Oliveira is the only centenarian director still active. Known as Manoel de Oliveira, he was born in Porto, Portugal. In 2008, he was the oldest active filmmaker and the only one to have worked during the silent film era. That year, the Cannes Festival awarded him a Palme d’Or, the first of his career, for his entire body of work. Still as active as ever, he presented “The Strange Case of Angelica” at Cannes in 2010.
His biography: The son of Porto’s industrial bourgeoisie, Manoel de Oliveira made his first short film Douro Faina Fluvial in 1931, a silent documentary dedicated to the activity of workers on the banks of the Douro, which was praised by international critics. His acclaim came in 1993 with “Val Abraham,” a clear variation on Madame Bovary that made a sensation at the Croisette. While surrounding himself with loyal collaborators (from producer Paulo Branco to actor Luis Miguel Cintra), he could now call upon stars such as Malkovich and Deneuve (The Convent), Mastroianni (Voyage to the Beginning of the World), or Piccoli (I’m Going Home). As if wishing to make up for lost time, he now films one movie a year: depicting the flaws of his contemporaries with acuity, he delves into his past (Porto of My Childhood) and that of his country (Word and Utopia). Having become the dean of active filmmakers, he continues to undertake the most original projects: in 2007, while “Belle toujours”, a variation on Belle de Jour, is released, he made a short film commissioned for the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Festival.
-The film’s synopsis:
One night, Isaac, a young photographer and tenant of Dona Rosa’s boarding house in Régua, is urgently called by a wealthy family to take the last portrait of their daughter Angelica, a young woman who died just after her marriage. In the mourning house, Isaac discovers Angelica and is stunned by her beauty. When he looks through the lens of his camera, the young woman seems to come back to life, just for him. From then on, Isaac falls instantly in love with her. The atypical commissioned work then becomes a strange aesthetic experience that brings the photographer into another dimension. Playing with the idea of death, Oliveira depicts a kind of metaphysical love and turns Trepa’s character into a romantic anti-hero and Lopez de Ayala into one of the most beautiful corpses ever filmed. Oliveira does not hesitate to use music with irony to emphasize these two aspects. The famous pianist Maria João Pires plays Chopin. As the story goes on, Chopin alternates with traditional songs, whose lyrics are prophetic of the love story. From then on, Angelica will haunt him day and night, until exhaustion.
-The Mercury: a cinema managed by the General Council
An “Art & Essai” cinema, the Mercury cinema is the meeting point for all lovers of the 7th art and offers no less than 5 screenings per day in each room, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., featuring debates, films, and especially a great cultural diversity with a programming that is always “cinéphile” and focused on all cinematic genres.
-Cinema Mercury – Departmental cinema – 16 Place Garibaldi in Nice
3 rooms with capacities of 84, 53, and 37 seats –
