The Cinematheque

“An immense exercise in freedom for [Monteiro] … There is great poetic force in his images … A defining film.”

Filipe Furtado, Revista Contracampo

The serene beauty of the coast-hugging house where Laura Rossellini (Laura Morante) and her extended family gather in Hovering Over the Water contains, perhaps, everything you could ask of a movie. Inside, multi-generational wisdom presides, whether over the preparation of a fish or the handling of a life-threatening crisis. The shadow of the past appears in its rooms, in the form of lost loves and strange visitors. And plots encircle its boundaries, both pure fiction—an American seafarer appears out of a dream, or a Hemingway novel—and reality, as the true-to-life assassination of a Palestinian diplomat is transmitted by radio into the film’s world. João César Monteiro’s third and most romantic feature is the closest he would come to the playfulness of Rivette, both in its sense of staging and conspiratorial entanglement. This film marks his final collaboration with master cinematographer Acácio de Almeida. Pedro Costa received early on-set experience as a member of the crew.

In Portuguese and English with English subtitles

“João César Monteiro is Portugal’s only great romantic filmmaker … We see everything [as if] filtered through a crystal, as in the last, fabulous shot, a trompe‑l’oeil of light and paint.”

João Bénard da Costa, Foco - Revista de Cinema