A group of boys shatters the matriarchal memory of an old bedroom. In the face of impending danger, the older boys vie for leadership. As the afternoon stretches on, they resort to violence. Chico, the young misfit, encounters a tragic portent of desire.
I remember once, when I was 12 years old, climbing over a ledge in the garden at my grandparents’ house. It was very high, dangerous and I don’t know if it really happened. I remember the feeling but I don’t remember the facts. What remains is an unclear image that could have been generated in my head to fill the gap of a false memory. In cinema, just as in memory, a moment during a summer afternoon under a hot rain, which fills the air with a very specific weight, can last an eternity. Chuvas de Verão makes me feel like I’m watching a memory of my own, even though I’ve never been to an attic with my friends to burn an old dress. Mário Veloso’s first fiction film, which already so remarkably captures something essential to cinema: the feeling felt in an endless moment during a summer afternoon that we no longer remember very well. (Rui Mendes)
