No-one would think of making a film which repeatedly tells us about the impossibility of its purpose," Joao César Monteiro says cryptically of his latest movie. The 60-year-old maverick has been a law unto himself since the early 1970s, making long, idiosyncratic dramas laced, surprisingly often, with a touch of humour, best exemplified by the dramatic comedy Recordacoes Da Casa Amarela (Recollections Of The Yellow House), which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989.

As Bodas De Deus (The Espousal Of God) is Monteiro's l7th feature, loosely linked to his l5th - the three-hour The Comedy Of God, which won the Grand Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1995. The Comedy... is a libertine affair whose principal protagonist, Joao de Deus ('John God'), holds down a routine job in an ice cream parlour but devotes his private life to collecting female pubic hair in an album at home. Monteiro has already dismissed some suggestions that As Bodas... is in any way a sequel. But it once again features the worldly Joao de Deus.

While counting a case full of money given to him by a celestial messenger, he is able to save the young Joana (Rita Durao) from drowning in a nearby lake before taking her to a convent. "How responsible," the director points out.

Monteino has always taken the lead in his films, and As Bodas De Deus sees no exception. In his philosophical comedy of last year, the wonderfully named John Wayne's Pelvis, he went even further, playing a dual role - an actor playing God in a Strindberg drama, and a sailor who stows away on the stage set. On that particular film, Monteiro seemed typically hell-bent on alienating his audience by limiting his actual acting time in favour of leisurely, drawn-out shots. The Espousal Of God will be no audience cakewalk either. "I hope very few people agree that the film is delicious, " says its creator. Stephen Mackey