A Religiosa Portugesa (The Portugese Nun)

Recent feature (2009) from Eugene Green.
This film is interested in its own status. From the dialogue, and repitious shots of the camera at work, we are reminded we are in a film. This is also achieved by the flat, affectless acting, with gaps in between the sentences, as though waiting for a cue. Also in the emotions triggered, and in the fatefulness. People here are clearly playing parts. This is the prodcut of the films attempt to discuss the entry of the real. Trying to find a moment of truth, of realness, is this films' project, and problematising the actors and so on is the attempt to achieve this. Making us constantly conscious that we are wathcing actors act is trying to ask us where the real is. Can reality enter through the 'unreal' scenes written by the director, acted out?
The way this is shot is really not too unconventional. We have a pretty static camera (usually), with a preference for straight-on two-shots. Note also the circulation around the dinner tables. The characters generally stay still, coming to meet each other, which we could, if being cruel, say is just 'stand and deliver', though the unrealism/artifice seems delibertae. There is also the most obvious feature, the straight on dialogue. With the reference perhaps Ozu, this enables a lot of close-up work, to study the faces, as well as abovementioned self-reflexivity. These features should not though give the impression of too much stangeness; there is a hell of a lot of static camera over the shoulder shot-reverse, with the speaker on screen (even in straight on work, this is the case), and pretty normal exterior shots.
This isn't a masterpiece by any means. The actual content is a little undergraduate, it is in fact deceptively simple, with the slightly vapid question 'what is real?'. There is a not great scene with a nun, which deals in slightly pretentious abstractions. Unless one wants to say its deliberate, the fact that a boy being adopted is himself always an after thought to her subjectivity is a little worrying. This film is pleasant to look at, never drags, and at least asks questions. Is it really anything more than that? No.