O fio do horizonte (*)

Made in the style of a policier, O Fio do Horizonte has a magic-realistic story that is striking for this genre. The fifty½year-old pathologist Spino (Claude Brasseur) works in the Lisbon mortuary and is involved in many criminal cases. One day he thinks he recognises himself as young man in the corpse of a murdered man. His colleagues and his girlfriend Francesca (Andréa Ferréol) have serious doubts about his mental health but, hounded by his past, he investigates the background to the strangely-familiar corpse. It is the same age as Spino when he lost his parents and his beloved sister in a tragic accident; a traumatic event for Spino and one that he has apparently never come to terms with. Spino's investigation gets him more and more confused in a maze created by the past and he loses touch with reality. The past is like a horizon that disappears when you approach it - which also explains the title.Old Lisbon is the set for Spino's shadow world; the film is shot with atmosphere and deep shadows. The idiosyncratic music is also striking, written by Zbigniew Preisner, Kieslowski's regular composer.