Mysteries of Lisbon (2011)
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Reviews Counted: 49
Fresh: 41 | Rotten: 8
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Critic Reviews: 22
Fresh: 20 | Rotten: 2
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.7/5
User Ratings: 1,162
My Rating
Movie Info
Raul Ruiz's masterful adaptation of the eponymous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel (by Camilo Castelo Branco) evokes the complex intertwined narratives of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. The core story centers on Joao, the bastard child of an ill-fated romance between two members of the aristocracy who are forbidden to marry, and his quest to discover the truth of his parentage. But this is just the start of an engrossing tale that follows a multitude of characters whose fates conjoin,
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Cast
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Adriano Luz
Father Dinis, Sabino Ca... -
Maria João Bastos
Angela de Lima, Ã?ngela... -
Ricardo Pereira
Alberto de Magalhaes, A... -
José Afonso Pimentel
Pedro da Silva, Pedro d... -
Joao Luis Arrais
Pedro da Silva - Child -
Clotilde Hesme
Elisa de Montfort -
Léa Seydoux
Blanche de Montfort -
Melvil Poupaud
Colonel Ernest Lacroze,... -
Malik Zidi
Visconde Armagnac, Visc... -
São José Correia
Anacieta dos Remédios,... -
Albano Jerónimo
Count of Santa Barbara,... -
João Baptista
D. Pedro da Silva -
Martin Loizillon
Sebastiao de Melo -
Julian Alluguette
Benoît de Montfort, Be... -
Joana de Verona
Eugenia -
Rui Morisson
Marquis of Montezelos -
Carloto Cotta
D. Alvaro de Albuquerqu... -
Maria João Pinho
Countess of Viso -
Manuel Jose Mendes
Friar Baltasar da Encar... -
Margarida Vila-Nova
Marquise of Alfarela -
Sofia Aparício
Countess of Penacova -
Catarina Wallenstein
Countess of Arosa -
Americo Silva
Bailiff -
Ana Chagas
Deolinda -
André Gomes
Barao de Sa, Barão de ... -
Antonio Simao
Novelist -
Bernard Lanneau
Father Dinis (French V... -
Dinarte Branco
Dilettante -
Duarte Guimaraes
D. Paulo, Filipe Vargas... -
Helena Coelho
Marquise of Santa Eulal... -
Joao Vilas Boas
Butler -
José Airosa
Bernardo -
Lena Friedrich
Maid -
Marcello Urgeghe
Doctor -
Marco de Almeida
Count of Viso -
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José Miguel Monteiro
Doctor -
Nuno Tavora
Dilettante -
Paulo Pinto
D. Martinho de Almeida -
Pedro Carmo
Gentleman -
Vania Rodrigues
D. Antonia
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Mysteries of Lisbon Trailer & Photos
All Critics (51) | Top Critics (22) | Fresh (42) | Rotten (8) | DVD (3)
The production design and costumes are immaculate, while Ruiz's camera glides around soirées, ducks under tables and peers from behind curtains.
Top CriticA sumptuous unravelling of secrets wrapped in tantalizing stories that gradually interconnect the lives of an ensemble of characters who seduce, betray and defend each other in the years surrounding the Peninsular War.
Based on the sprawling 19th-century novel by Camilo Castelo Branco, Chilean director Raul Ruiz renders an equally sprawling tale filled with love and war, violence and vengeance and the search for identity.
This isn't one of those epics that uses length as a bludgeon. Rather than sweep, the movie spirals, twisting its viewpoint to reveal tales within tales.
A sprawling 19th century novel filtered through the mind of a trickster filmmaker, the late Raúl Ruiz, who both delights in and subverts his wildly complex and melodramatic source material.
It's a lot. But if you're at all inclined, it's just right.
This is a film of labyrinthine storytelling and cinematic weaves of character and narrative that stretch across countries and time itself...
A mixed bag for a career masterpiece, the Blu-ray of Mysteries of Lisbon gets some things wrong in terms of authoring, but Raúl Ruiz's final epic is so enchanting you may talk yourself into not noticing.
It is four and a half hours long, but it's got enough plot for at least 30 movies.
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.
If you have time, dip in.
[It reminds] us of Ruiz's gifts with light and colour, his ambitions with narrative, his sometimes interesting, sometimes frustrating remoteness, and his preoccupations with myth, the avant-garde and 19th-century classicism, all at once.
Offers a Dickensian level of storytelling richness while unfurling the tangled personal history of a teenage boy seeking the truth about his parentage.
This über-snooze of a costume epic, based on a Portuguese novel, has flickers of surreal invention like valedictory memory spasms.
For those with open minds, the cinema of Ruiz offers enormous and unique pleasure.
Storytelling of breathtaking scale and grandeur, even if the complex plotting may twist your synapses along the way.
It's all played out beautifully and captured by Ruiz with his characteristically detailed cinematography.
The first thing you need to know about a four-hour-plus movie is that you'll probably wish it were longer.
It was easy to lose focus and turn off such a sprawling discursive work.
I think I love best that Ruiz found a way to adapt this frothy tale to an equally frothy style of filmmaking. It's alive in the most passionate way.
Audience Reviews for Mysteries of Lisbon
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Pedro da Silva - Adult: One soon discovers that it's not difficult to disappear from the eyes of others but that our own eyes follow us wherever we go.
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August 4, 2011:
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Foreign Titles
- Mysteries of Lisbon (DE)
- Mysteries of Lisbon (Misterios de Lisboa) (UK)
It's not even that interesting. If it had been better directed and edited, I think I still would have been disappointed by it. It astonishes me that this bourgeois soap opera is being raved about by some top-notch critics.
It is beautiful to look at; that's for sure. But films have to be way more than visually beautiful. They must have something to say. This film has little to say. It is soap opera given a high bourgeois treatment by a director (Chilean director Raul Ruiz) who loves mainstream 19th-century fiction.
If Mr. Ruiz had any interest in the 21st century, he might be an interesting artist for us today. But he doesn't. He wants to go back in time to 1820, and he should. Even if he had anything fresh and interesting to say about the 19th century, that would be something. But he doesn't even have that. As an artist, he's embalmed.