The Cinematheque

“This is the film of an heir—with all the insolence that implies—whose freedom allows him to organize the elements of a pictorial, musical, and cinematographic culture to recount the thunderclap of birth, the impatience of the body and desire, and the joy of being in nature.”

Laurence Giavarini, Cahiers du cinéma

The surprises in a fairy tale, João César Monteiro has said, are by their nature ​“total and miraculous.” For his breakthrough feature he built a medieval world, in ways that earned comparison to Rohmer’s Perceval, out of unreal materials. (The more unassuming, the better to hold more shock and strange beauty in store.) The interior sets are pure, flat artifice, while exterior landscapes appear via front projection; in Silvestre all requires belief, or is not exactly as it seems. This extends to the tale’s heroine. Sílvia (Maria de Medeiros) trusts herself more than her sister, her father’s advice, or the suitors at her door. Navigating pitfalls—domesticity, dragons, and doom-laden objects—she assumes the power of a new identity, the male Silvestre, and protects herself with uncompromising speech. Acácio de Almeida’s tableaux cinematography evokes religious paintings. Monteiro, who cameos as a king, balances the proceedings between deadpan irony and breathtaking spectacle.

In Portuguese with English subtitles

The opening-night screening of Silvestre will be preceded by an introduction from Programming Associate Michael Scoular.

“A masterpiece of faux naïveté, Silvestre overflows with miraculous events and wonderment at the misery and violence of the world.”

Olaf Möller, Film Comment

“Marks the beginning of Monteiro’s penchant for combining art’s highest highs and lowest lows … A world of duplicitous shapeshifters, of feigned nobility, of the cosmic wheel of fortune, and of the bawdy bard who slips a few dirty jokes in the middle of the story.”

Zach Lewis, Screen Slate