Miramar

Despite the great demands made by this film on the viewer, it is in the last resort a light, fresh and passionate cinematographic fable. The suicide of the wealthy parents is liberating for the young waster Miramar (Joao Rebello). Armed with a 16mm camera he resolves to film anything that moves. He wants to make a film ‘without a story’, an art film, a film that shows naked reality, in other words: the world as it is observed by the charming adolescent. Miramar’s universe is that of a naïve and morbid cinephile: with the essays of Eisenstein under his arm, the dialogues of Cocteau in his head and the gaze of the great Hollywood classics, he sets off with his camera. Miramar is a dynamic film about growing up, dunked in an ever- present self-mockery. Incomparable. Maybe it has something to do with Godard, but it is above all very crazy. The film can be regarded as an artistic investigation of an unknown genre, as the imaginary story of a film-maker looking for the source of his own cinema – a cinema that is both contemporary and goes back to the roots. This declaration of love to the seventh art works because Júlio Bressane himself creates the necessary conditions to film this impossible story with a great feeling for framing and a restrained tone. (Olivier Seguret, Libération)