The Portuguese Woman

2018 [PORTUGUESE]

Action / Drama / History

4
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 88% · 8 reviews
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 455 455

Plot summary

North of Italy, the von Kettens dispute the forces of the Episcopate of Trent. Herr Ketten seeks marriage in a distant country, Portugal. After their honeymoon journey back home, Ketten leaves again for the war. Eleven years elapsed… Rumours are running about the presence of that 'foreigner' in the castle. Some say she's a heretic. Until one day, the Bishop of Trento ends up dying and, with the signature of peace, falls the background of von Ketten's life. Will the Portuguese win, where death seems to be moving in?

Top cast

Ingrid Caven as Passageira
Marcello Urgeghe as Von Ketten
Adelaide Teixeira as Aia de Portugal
Clara Riedenstein as A Portuguesa
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
1.23 GB
1280*694
Portuguese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  es  fr  pt  tr  
25 fps
2 hr 17 min
Seeds 1
2.29 GB
1920*1040
Portuguese 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  es  fr  pt  tr  
25 fps
2 hr 17 min
Seeds 1

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx 6 / 10

Beautiful fragments confounded by baffling artistic choices

The Portuguese Woman is a movie about a upper class woman who marries an absentee chatelain. She travels from coastal Portugal to mountainous Northern Italy where she raises a son for her husband who much prefers the life of war away from home. Her husband is Lord von Ketten, also known as the Lord of Chains on account of how many prisoners he takes during his absurd campaigns. A stranger to his own home he has an ancestrally-bestowed belief in skirmishing that forms the entirety of his personality.What should the Portuguese lady do in her dilapidated eyrie? Nurture animals, play music, indulge in the arts and crafts, these are her answers.The movie is very literate, actual Mediaeval songs are used here, and the movie does pick up on a real feeling of the times, a general fear of the armed man, who might turn up at any point raping and pillaging (forty pieces of music entitled Mass of the Armed Man or Missa L'homme armé survive from the period). There are also moments of genuine feminist power. For example whey the Portuguese goes walking with her assigned tutor who proceeds to fill her head with much nonsense on the subject of the countryside. It does resonate with a contemporary feeling that men are mediating womens' interaction with the world, all too much of our intellectual heritage is sheer nonsense written down by men many years ago. This is underlined when von Ketten meets with the Bishop of Trent, who talks a haughty and toxic gibberish that von Ketten mistakes for profundity.Still the movie is often unwelcomingly strange, such as when white rabbits are strewn on the set as if Jeff Koons took a wrong turn somewhere. The hardest choice to grasp is the frequent interruptions by Ingrid Caven, dressed in modern clothing and bathetically crooning. I started to gasp with frustration every time she appeared. There are also disbelief shattering moments, such as when the Portuguese and her relative are giggling under a stream of potato flakes. It is fun to watch in a documentary sense, as the women are clearly enjoying themselves, but it's not clear if these potato or soap flakes are meant to be snow or blossom or what, and why this artistic choice was being made, maybe it is a deliberate breaking of a dream? The relationship between the chatelaine and animals is quite bizarre and Disney-like (think Snow White mesmerising animals). Only in the world of this movie is raising a wolf cub alongside your children a good idea, for either the wolf or the human children. The ends in the only sensible move that von Ketten makes in the movie, paradoxically driving a wedge between the couple.All this said there are moments as a view of exquisite transportation into a distant era, painterly vignettes of soldiers in a courtyard, milady swimming in a dark pond, and playing an ancient musical instrument. The movie has much to commend it, but also can crush with its impenetrable longueurs and often baffling artistic choices.
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Reviewed by mehoknicks 7 / 10

Pretty but the Brechtian acting makes it too distant to really involve

The pace of life of those not at war is slow - in fact, it is so slow that Time is a main character in the screenplay and should have been paid a salary. The servants, always at the beck and call, have little to do waiting on her ladyship who at least has her leisure to keep her occupied. However, there are scenes of rural settings that help alleviate the press of time somewhat as does an excellent soundtrack.

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