Anyone who has already sat through the cumulative 257 minutes of Volumes 1 and 2 of Miguel Gomes’s idiosyncratic portrait of contemporary Portugal (released in consecutive weeks last month) is unlikely to want to skip the third instalment. However, it is fair to say that this is the least essential of the three films. The narrator Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate) is fleshed out as a character. Her adventure – a brief escape to an archipelago populated by outlaws – is a playful tangle of anachronisms. But charm dissipates with the final story, an overlong documentary-style portrait of a working-class bird-trapping community. Tonally, it’s reminiscent of Raymond Depardon’s glum portraits of French rural life, spiked with surreal flashes. If this was Scheherazade’s final story, it would have been unlikely to stave off her execution.
