The Metamorphosis of Birds

With her first feature, the Portuguese filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos has created a new art form.

Catarina Vasconcelos who was born in Lisbon in 1986 makes her feature debut with this film and in so doing delivers a work that could hardly be more individual. It won the FIPRESCI award in Berlin in 2020 and, although the filmmaker was drawing on the history of her own family, she has created a work which defies easy categorisation. It's certainly an amazing piece and in my case one that leads to a huge split in my responses: I find the film’s first half wonderful to behold but its second lost me. However, The Metamorphosis of Birds is so unlike anything else that it would not surprise me if viewers had a whole range of different reactions - and that could extend from outright rejection to a preference the opposite of my own as to which half is the better.

As the film acknowledges, it is a free realisation of the experiences of three generations of the Vasconcelos family. Catarina is looking back first of all on the lives of her grandparents, Henrique and Beatriz, who had no less than six children, the oldest of these being Catarina's father, Jacinto. Henrique was a sailor and consequently away from home for long periods so the film’s first half is largely devoted to Beatriz and to her children as they grow up, but there’s an emphasis too on the letters that passed between Beatriz and Henrique when he was at sea.

Before this film was conceived, Henrique, who had long outlived Beatriz, died but not before making it known that he wanted all the letters shared with his wife to be burnt and the family had honoured his wish. Consequently, the letters quoted in the film are as imagined by Catarina Vasconcelos but what she is evoking here is based on her researches and on the memories of the other family members. The stylised nature of the film is evident in its opening and so is its humanity. In a work which offers beautiful images finely composed but very rarely allows any camera movement, we start with a shot of a face. This could almost be a portrait in the style of some old master and over this image a male voice refers to Triz, that being what Beatriz liked to be called. The shot itself is indeed initially as static as a painting and we are encouraged to see this as the face of Beatriz. But after a while we see the eyes move, and then it is as though Beatrix is being brought back to life.

What follows features different voices talking about the family with reference to the time when the six children were gradually growing up. Actual dialogue is rare but actors are seen representing the siblings over the years and similarly there are images depicting Henrique at sea. What we hear tells the story of Beatriz and Henrique while also conjuring up the period through which they were living (thus a montage of stamps becomes a comment on Portugal's colonial history). Nothing here amounts to a naturalistic presentation but these stylisations are readily accessible. Indeed, in so far as the film deals with memories of childhood and with an imaginative recreation of one's family in the years before one was born, The Metamorphosis of Birds richly evokes not just the life of one family in one place but something that feels universal. As such it reverberates with the viewer and gains from a tone that is deeply warm and affectionate but never sentimental.

The film has no clear-cut division into two parts but about halfway through the narrative reaches the point at which Beatriz dies at a relatively young age. At this stage the theme of loss and grief plays a strong role and it widens by relating to not one death but to two. For now the filmmaker herself appears in the film expressing her own sense of bereavement over the death of her mother, Ana (that happened when Catarina was only seventeen years old). Earlier there have been just a few moments when the stylisation has become too self-conscious but the poetic tone of the film has come through unforced and personal. In the second half, however, references to trees, water and birds are built up in a far more self-conscious and high-flown way. Nor is banality avoided as when a fallen tree represents the dead or when we see Catarina working on a jigsaw of Beatriz’s face. The second half makes more use of classical music on the soundtrack but overall the feel of it is such that the viewer will either find the film increasingly profound or sinking into pretentiousness with moments of bathos as well. Alas, it was the latter reaction that I had. Nevertheless, considered on its own the first half is such a rich and rewarding cinematic experience, something so enticing, that it would be a shame to miss it. After all, there may be many viewers who will be positive about the way in which the film develops and able to reject my reservations.

Original title: A Metamorfose dos Passaros.

MANSEL STIMPSON

Cast: Manuel Rosa, João Móra, Ana Vasconcelos, Henrique Vasconcelos, Inês Melo Campos, Catarina Vasconcelos, Luisa Ministro, José Maria Rosa, Ana Margarida Vasconcelos, José Vasconcelos, Nuno Vasconcelos, Teresa Vasconcelos, Pedro Vasconcelos, Henrique Serpa Vasconcelos.

Dir Catarina Vasconcelos, Pro Catarina Vasconcelos, Pedro Fernandes Duarte and Joana Gusmão, Screenplay Catarina Vasconcelos, Ph Paulo Menezes, Pro Des Maria Inès Gonçalves, Mariana Veloso and Catarina Vasconcelos, Ed Francisco Moreira and Catarina Vasconcelos, Music Madalena Palmeirim.  

Primeira Idade-New Wave Films.
101 mins. Portugal. 2020. UK Rel: 11 March 2022. Cert. U.