The Last Time I Saw Macao - A Última Vez Que Vi Macau
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.