A 93 minute film last Sunday can be considered a mere appetizer against the epic that is Mysteries of Lisbon, which due to its 4hr 30 minute running time will start at 2.00pm this Sunday. There will be an interval!
The Director, Raoul Ruiz, is little known in the UK, although Time Regained, with John Malkovich, did feature in the 2001 Festival Programme. The critics seem to love 'Mysteries, not least Philip French in the Guardian -
"The duration is intimidating, but the time flies by in an engrossing movie that covers three generations over the late 18th and early 19th centuries and deals with themes – chance, identity, manipulation, multiple personality – that recur in Ruiz's oeuvre. Like Jorge Luís Borges and Gabriel García Márquez (two Latin American writers he admires) and Italo Calvino, he is fascinated by the very act of storytelling, and the movie brings to mind Dickens, Balzac, Hugo and Dumas, but with a modernist twist."Probably not many car chases then.