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A biopic of Portuguese writer and poet Wenceslau de Moraes. He is a Navy official in Macau in 1895, married to Chinese woman Atchan with whom he has two children. He separates from them and moves to Kobe, Japan as a Portuguese consul. Wenceslau marries O-Yone, but she dies from a stomach disease, so he moves to her native city Tokushima, where he visits her grave every day. During World War I, some Japanese are against Wenceslau, mistaking him for a German. He then has a relationship with O-Yone's niece Ko-Haru, who also dies. Atchan visits him and begs him to return to Macau to live with their grown up kids, but Wenceslau refuses. He dies alone in the house, discovered by neighbors when the stench of his corpse was already decaying. His sister Francesca keeps his letters.
This biopic of Portuguese writer Wenceslau de Moraes who decided to live in Japan is meditative, trying to be poetic by reciting his poems, yet the director Paulo Rocha stubbornly refuses to depict the more interesting details from his life, and instead almost deliberately shows only the most uninteresting bits. Some fundamental questions are left vague: why did Moraes decide to travel to Japan? What fascinated him about said country? How did he learn Japanese? How did he meet O-Yone, his Japanese wife? How was it for him to walk on the streets of Kobe, go shopping and interact with locals? None of this is shown in the film, and that is a fatal flaw. Rocha only shows ellipses from his life: for instance, after his life in Macau, Moraes is suddenly shown riding a carriage in Kobe, with O-Yone already married to him. Why was their meeting skipped? Rocha cuts short some parts, but prolongs others unnecessarily. After the pointless first 30 minutes, indulging is some sort of surreal poetry including images from modern day Japan, the story finally starts, and Roche uses the technique of one scene-one frame, with long takes that last up to 10 minutes, but at almost 3-hours of running time, the movie is definitely overlong. Some scenes are inspired here and there: for instance, some 53 minutes into the film, Isabel takes on the role of a maid, as the camera zooms in on a mirror in the house, depicting the reflection of Moraes and O-Yone while sitting in the bath; or the elegant transition some 105 minutes into the film, where a woman is pushing a man in a wheelchair, they go behind a war memorial, and a nurse exits from the other sides, pushing a bed on wheels, as the title says: "Canto VI: The Little Lord of Lives". In the final scene, the six actors are seen standing in front of the camera on top of a building, holding photos of the characters they played in the film, and burning them on the table. "Island of Loves" will satisfy fans of art cinema, but for the rest it can drag until it becomes bland.
Grade:++
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