Mateus Lagoa and his wife Irene will celebrate their 20th anniversary at a luxurious resort on a tropical island, leaving their teenage son dangerously adrift.
There is a characteristic in Sandro Aguilar’s cinema that sets him apart from all other Portuguese filmmakers. His ability to tell elliptical narratives, at the same time accompanied by timelessness, by an intextuality between text and image, which he always embodies in unique artistic objects. First Person Plural adds humour, sensuality and more elegance to his previous works. This is a piece of cinema that doesn’t respond (as current cinema tends to do) to the issues on the agenda of the day. Aguilar’s cinema is part of a deeper line of cinema, which is the reflection of image and sound, for a time of its own that is conditioned by the experience of cinema itself. The trio of actors, Isabel Abreu, Albano Jerónimo and Eduardo Aguilar, play multiple characters, creating forms that go beyond the normal composition of a character, because they speak with their bodies, their expressions and their presence. This is a film that, being outside of a present time, brings us back to our present. A couple celebrates 20 years of marriage and goes travelling, their son stays at home amidst the doubts of his adolescence/youth. From here, the possibilities are endless, because it’s Aguilar’s gesture, controlled improvisation and sense of narrative that command, like a conductor, an orchestra of elements that lead us to a Portuguese Marienbad. (Miguel Valverde)
