Francisca 06/21 Blu-ray (Rental)

Product Description A tale of an obsessive love affair, Manoel de Oliveira's Francisca is based on a novel by Agustina Bessa-Luís, whose work he'd later adapt twice more. The book's re-telling of a troubled passage in real-life author Camilo Castelo Branco life (his friend José Augusto embarked on a perverse game of marital cat and mouse with Francisca, the woman the novelist loved) led Oliveira to new levels of stylistic and formal imagination. (It helped that his wife, a distant relative of the historical Francisca, gave him access to a cache of the woman's letters.) With its elaborate title cards, its abundance of shots in which the action is oriented directly toward the camera, its gloomy interiors, and its show-stopping gala set-pieces, Francisca is an exacting, sumptuous and utterly inimitable cinematic experience, and one of Oliveira's crowning achievements. Review A two-hour-and-45-minute tour de force. A drolly funny, ravishingly beautiful and daringly stylized feast of a movie. Reemerging in a year many of us would love to forget, it's a work of art to remember. --Justin Chang, LA Times Francisca is both classical and postmodern, a cross between a lush Visconti period piece and the stylized expressionism of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. One of cinema titan Manoel de Oliveira's greatest films. --J. Hoberman, The New York Times A masterpiece of modern cinema. A story of great subtlety, density, and emotional impact. It is as if Jean-Marie Straub has collaborated with Max Ophüls. --Dave Kehr, When Movies Mattered