Seventeenth session of the film programme Manoel de Oliveira e o Cinema Português 2, with the screening of Paulo Rocha's "O Desejado" (1987), presented by the writer and videographer Regina Guimarães.

O DESEJADO ou AS MONTANHAS DA LUA

Paulo Rocha | POR, FRA | 1987 | 117'

João is the spiritual heir (the term he prefers to bastard) of Manuel Brandão, his dying godfather, and at the same time the political leader of a small party of a desintegrating governmental coalition. Through love and power plays, which earns him the admiration of men and the adoration of women, João builds his career. The political crisis is simultaneously the common thread of a plot where the most complex passions fuse together. João is sure of his power and seduction, both amorous and political, as it is of his immient rise as prime-minister, and his assurance is broken only when he has to bring back from Rome the beautiful, aggressive revolutionary Antónia, Manuel's daughter, who has a terrorist boyfriend and always believed in breaking all ties with the past. She is the only one who's able to resist to João's charm, bringing him doubt in his otherwise doubtless existence, and even falling in love with Tiago, João's illegitimate son. Pregnant, Antónia gives birth to a son, before tragically disappearing with Tiago. It is possible that the child that João carries is his own son, or grandson, but the child is above all his heir, who will be named Manuel.