Tres irmaos
To make her second feature film, Tres irmaos, young Portuguese director Teresa Villaverde returned to her childhood for both inspiration and an actress, casting schoolfriend Maria de Madeiros as a 20-year-old woman, Maria, who fails to grow up. Madeiros' imperturbable performance won her the Colpa Volpi best actress prize at the 1994 Venice Film Festival, which she topped with a cameo role as Bruce Willis' dotty girlfriend in Tarantino's celebrated Pulp Fiction.
Tres irmaos is a psychological study of emotional inadequacy. Its central character, Maria, would like to live forever with her brothers but, growing up, they drift away. Alone, secretive, keeping her feelings and suffering to herself, never wanting to leave Lisbon, she loses her job, tends to her ill father, gets embroiled in a murder and ends up on the run...
'It is not a happy story, but then sometimes neither is life,' says Villverde. The film's international financing and sales may be happier. Produced by the up-and-coming Joaquim Pinto at the Lisbon-based GER production house, Tres irmaos is a typically cosmopolitan Portuguese production, with co-finance from France (the CNC, Arion Production) and Germany (ZDF). The film took some 30,000 admission on home turf - good going in Portugal - and had been sold by Italy's Intra Films to Italy and Denmark by Cannes 95.
JOHN HOPEWELL
Prod co: GER/Arion
Prod: Joaquim Pinto
Dir/Scr: Teresa Villaverde
Ph: Volker Tittel
Ed: Vasco Pimentel, Teresa Villaverde
Prod des: Joao Calvário
Cast: Maria de madeiros, Marcello Urgeghe, Mireille Perrier
International sales: Intra Films
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