U.S. Premiere

Q&A with director Matías Piñeiro and actress Maria Villar

As in his critical hit Viola (2013), Matías Piñeiro doesn’t transplant Shakespeare to the present day so much as summon the spirit of his polymorphous comedies. Víctor (Julián Larquier Tellarini) returns to Buenos Aires after his father’s death and a spell in Mexico to prepare a radio production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. Reuniting with his repertory, he finds himself sorting out complicated entanglements with girlfriend Paula (Agustina Muñoz), sometime lover Ana (María Villar), and departed actress Natalia (Romina Paula), as well as his muddled relations with the constellation of friends involved with the project. As the film tracks the group’s criss-crossing movements and interactions, their lives become increasingly enmeshed with the fiction they’re reworking, potential outcomes multiply, and reality itself seems subject to transformation. An intimate, modestly scaled work that takes characters and viewers alike into dizzying realms of possibility, The Princess of France is the most ambitious film yet from one of world cinema’s brightest young talents, a cumulatively thrilling experience. A Cinema Guild release.

Screening with:

The Old Man of Belem / O Velho do Restelo
Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France, 2014, DCP, 19m
Portuguese with English subtitles

Manoel de Oliveira is now 105 years old, and every new film is, literally and figuratively, a journey through the past—his past, cinema’s past, Portugal’s past. His newest film, shot in his hometown of Porto, is a mythical encounter in the Garden of Eternity between Cervantes, the 16th-century poet Luís Vaz de Camões, the 20th-century poet Teixeira de Pascoaes, the 19th-century novelist Camilo Castelo Branco (author of Doomed Love), and, through his own cinematic voice, Oliveira himself. Shot by the great Renato Berta, and featuring Oliveira regular Luis Miguel Cíntra as Camões.