When I look at my love, he looks at the boy in front of him, but we only see each other’s backs. Never the face. Because we’re not all dancing together. We’re in pairs. And in this dance, my love doesn’t exist. I drag him into it, but only his back. And it was his back that I fell in love with. His broad back, dressed in the most beautiful costume in the world, which is all the costumes he wore.
A whispering voice tells us a story of love and heartbreak. In the image, against a black background, a succession of photographs forms various compositions. They are almost always night-time photographs marked by the sharp glare of the flash. Miguel De’s camera is particularly attentive to the details of rural kitsch: plastic flowers, motorbikes wrapped in tarpaulins, worn carpets, religious iconography, barbed wire and, of course, the world of folk dances and costumes. But what could easily be a condescending gaze is, touchingly, a display of affection. The context of folklore serves as a catalyst for a naive hyper-romanticism that possesses the disarming power of its confessional tone. This, and of course, the play on gender roles defined by tradition, challenged by the love story between two young men. The handkerchief becomes a symbol of desire, with the red embodying the ardour of lust. The narratives the camera invents in each photograph shatter the continuity between sound and image. Until, as in La Jetée, the stillness of the photograph gains movement through the power of a single glance. (Ricardo Vieira Lisboa)
