This was the 622nd film I've seen out of the 1,199 movies on the "Before you Die" list that I'm gradually working my way through.
Translated English Title: Limit
Director: Mario Peixoto
An experimental, poetic film offering, I don't mind admitting that this one was a bit of a chore.
The "story" (a term which I use loosely) is that of three people - two women and one man - stuck on a small boat together, drifting on an unnamed body of water. The three are bedraggled and recollecting past moments in their lives. One woman is an escapee from a prison; the man's lover has died; and the third woman seems to have abandoned her husband. These stories are all told almost exclusively through slow, measured visuals, with very minimal dialogue. The characters have no names (they are credited only as "Man 1," Woman 1" and "Woman 2"), and no specific details as to time or place are offered. While the backstories of the characters are presented in what seems to be chronological order, even this is not completely clear, as several elements of the film are rather fluid.
Watching Limite was not unlike watching a couple of films from a little earlier in this era: the Bunuel and Dali collaborations Un Chien Andelous and L'Age d'Or. While Limite does not use anywhere near the amount of surrealism as either of those hallucinatory films, there is a dreamlike quality to it. There are plenty of long, slow shots of each of the three main characters as they stare into the distance and ponder their circumstances - circumstances which I could only assume are meant to represent more universal feelings of loss, longing, and desire. At times, I found the movie so measured in its pace that I was mentally drifting. Perhaps this is simply my late-20th/early 21st-century viewer's attention span at work, but I found that I wasn't being given quite enough narrative meat into which I could sink my teeth. The result was drifting attention.
When things were in motion in the tale, however, there could be interesting aspects in terms of visual storytelling. I always appreciate any movie director who can tell stories without dialogue, and Limite shows this frequently. Granted, there's not exactly much of a "story," in the traditional sense. This isn't Sergio Leone brilliantly revealing characters' true natures through masterfully orchestrated, elaborate visual sequences. Rather, director Peixoto offers more subtle cues. A shared glance between people. A ring on a finger. A forlorn look at a tombstone. These moments are poignant and effective, even if less impactful because the characters are archetypes rather than "real" people.
For its time and place, it's easy to see why Limite made its mark. Like the aforementioned contemporary films by Bunuel and Dali, this was clearly meant as a work of art, rather than a mainstream story. It experimented with and pushed the boundaries of what the visual medium of film could do. For that, it is noteworthy, if not exactly enjoyable to watch for fans of more straightforward narratives.
That's 622 movies down. Only 577 to go before I can die.
Director: Mario Peixoto
An experimental, poetic film offering, I don't mind admitting that this one was a bit of a chore.
The "story" (a term which I use loosely) is that of three people - two women and one man - stuck on a small boat together, drifting on an unnamed body of water. The three are bedraggled and recollecting past moments in their lives. One woman is an escapee from a prison; the man's lover has died; and the third woman seems to have abandoned her husband. These stories are all told almost exclusively through slow, measured visuals, with very minimal dialogue. The characters have no names (they are credited only as "Man 1," Woman 1" and "Woman 2"), and no specific details as to time or place are offered. While the backstories of the characters are presented in what seems to be chronological order, even this is not completely clear, as several elements of the film are rather fluid.
Watching Limite was not unlike watching a couple of films from a little earlier in this era: the Bunuel and Dali collaborations Un Chien Andelous and L'Age d'Or. While Limite does not use anywhere near the amount of surrealism as either of those hallucinatory films, there is a dreamlike quality to it. There are plenty of long, slow shots of each of the three main characters as they stare into the distance and ponder their circumstances - circumstances which I could only assume are meant to represent more universal feelings of loss, longing, and desire. At times, I found the movie so measured in its pace that I was mentally drifting. Perhaps this is simply my late-20th/early 21st-century viewer's attention span at work, but I found that I wasn't being given quite enough narrative meat into which I could sink my teeth. The result was drifting attention.
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| There are plenty of scenes such as this - a lone figure, gazing at the horizon, dwelling on some sort of existential crisis. |
For its time and place, it's easy to see why Limite made its mark. Like the aforementioned contemporary films by Bunuel and Dali, this was clearly meant as a work of art, rather than a mainstream story. It experimented with and pushed the boundaries of what the visual medium of film could do. For that, it is noteworthy, if not exactly enjoyable to watch for fans of more straightforward narratives.
That's 622 movies down. Only 577 to go before I can die.
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