The Last Time I Saw Macao

Directors João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata in person at both screenings!

This stunning amalgam of playful film noir and Chris Marker–like cine-essay from João Pedro Rodrigues (To Die Like a Man, NYFF 2009) and João Rui Guerra da Mata explores the psychic pull of the titular former Portuguese colony. After a spectacular opening scene, in which actress Cindy Scrash lip-synchs, as tigers pace behind her, to Jane Russell’s “You Kill Me”—from Josef von Sternberg’s Macao (1952), a key reference here—the film shifts to da Mata’s off-screen recollections of growing up in this gambling haven in the South China Sea. He’s come back to Macao to help a friend who later vanishes—a mystery that begets not only poetic ruminations on time, place, and memory but also magnificent compositions of flora, fauna and cityscapes.