Perhaps the year’s most ambitious cinematic undertaking is director Miguel Gomes’s (Tabu) breathtaking trilogy of tales that channel the current struggles of economically depressed Portugal through an assortment of tales that range from farcical yarns to grounded accounts of social issues.
The dramatic shifts in tone become even more pronounced with the second film’s slow-tempo opening chapter about an old man on the lam. In “The Tears of the Judge,” a public trial becomes a mockery, with the testimony implicating everyone in attendance. Finally, The Desolate One ends on an exhilarating note, with a supremely entertaining story about a dog named Dixie who’s passed between owners, familiarising us with the inhabitants of a working-class apartment building.