The Portuguese film-maker Manoel de Oliveira will be 102 in December. He turned to the cinema in 1931 and has made 37 features, all but two since 1972, 16 of them this century. His films were once of inordinate length, but the recent ones, often starring well-known European actors, have been notable for their brevity, among them Belle toujours, a 68-minute sequel to Belle de jour.
His latest film, updated to the present from a classic short story by the Portuguese realist Eça de Queiróz (1845-1900), is a characteristically bittersweet, slightly perverse tale told by a young accountant to a middle-aged woman sitting beside him on a train from Lisbon to the Algarve. The narrator recalls his infatuation with a beautiful young woman with a Chinese fan, whom he sees in a window opposite his office. He falls for her, but his uncle refuses him permission to marry for reasons that we guess early on but that later become painfully apparent. The film unfolds in a series of carefully framed tableaux, the acting is stylised, the result exquisite.
