Contrasting styles, subjects and humors(humours) are among the advantages of attending an international film festival.
As a resident of Rio de Janeiro where local cinemas currently feature some of the most banal and silliest Hollywood imports, this movie lover is taking advantage of Rio`s International Film Festival—which ends today—to view other foreign imports.
Having never seen a comedy `made in Portugal,` and having never visited the inspiration for the positive and negative roots of Brazil, this moviegoer was among the few attendees at `Hotel Amor (`Love Hotel`), which brought much needed laughter in this turbulent war-torn epoch.
The film`s critics say –among their poison darts- that the trials and tribulations of a workaholic manager at a topsy turvy hotel in Lisboa under new ownership `would make a good situation comedy (Sitcom) rather than a movie. `
Maybe it would, but who cares ?
Starring Portuguese -English (by her Mom) infatiguable talented actress Jessica Athayde,39,as Catarina, the hotel manager who resides in her broom-closet office at the hotel, and featuring Brazil`s popular comedian Marcelo Adnet, as a visiting ,good-humoured guest in Lisboa for show appearances, the film directed by Brazilian Hermano Moreira(from Sao Paulo but residing in Lisboa since 2017) with a script by young Brazilian( Carioca) Bruno Bloch, can be viewed as either superficial or a comedy masking a profounder theme of the real motivation of workaholics.
For those of us who are travelaholics , the characters in the film are familiar: the complaining ugly American tourist who should have never left the USA, the `athletes` off the field and in their busy hotel beds (read footballers in `Love Hotel`) who consider a foreign hotel as a site for sexual orgies, visiting Brazilian tourists who erroneously believe because of the common language, Portugal has the same cultural habits as their homeland, the couple who fight non-stop behind closed doors disrupting the peace of the their neighbours ,the virtuoso chef who is inflexible in his kitchen, a restaurant diner who is impossibly difficult in her selection of lunch or dinner and the bellhop, who seeking goid tips fauns over a visiting celebrity.
Vera Moura(Portugal),Cleo Malulo(Angola) ,Julia Palha(Portugal),Lucas Sampaio(Brazil) Magarida Corceiro (Portugal) are among the Young ,multi-national cast.
The comedy was filmed inside the `iconic` Hotel Roma in Lisboa this year and despite any adverse comments/ critics, this viewer truly enjoyed, got some good laughs and rated the film excellent on the festival`s rating (online) app.
The young director, screen writer and some of the casts were on hand at Botafogo cinema and if there is laughter in Lisboa then those unacquainted with Portugal should visit it one day.