AFI Latin American Film Festival 2009

Portuguese veteran director João Botelho (THE FATALIST, 2006 AFI European Union Film Showcase) crafts a surreal screen adaptation of the historical novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís, frequent collaborator of Manoel de Oliveira. Shifting between the past and the present, actress Ana Moreira plays no fewer than five roles, all incarnations of the same character—and sometimes her own rival!—so headstrong and stubborn, it’s as if her grudges and obsessions keep propagating her across generations. In the present, family black sheep Rosamund begins delving into the past of her ancestor, Emília de Sousa, a 19th-century actress who abandoned her career to marry a baron. A slight by Sissi, the bitchy empress of Austria, may have led to her dramatic suicide off the Madeira sea cliffs. Or it might have been a man. Or did it really happen at all? Official Selection, 2008 New York and Rome film festivals.