Our Beloved Month of August

The making of a film; the touring of a family pop group; the burgeoning romance between two cousins; the varieties of life, culture, and economy in rural Portugal: for his second feature, Miguel Gomes wove enough material for four or five films into a panorama that was at once relaxed and sprawling, poignant and seductive. Gomes himself plays a filmmaker arguing with his producers about the film we’re watching, which at first seems to be a documentary—people he meets across the country tell the camera about their livelihoods—but then evolves into a fictional love story performed with unforgettable sadness by a small group of non-actors. Our Beloved Month of August remains a high point in Gomes’s career: a loose, shaggy, slyly intelligent road movie you can’t help falling in love with.