The Ornithologist (2106 Portugal)
Drama, Event, Genre
, trackback
Director: João Pedro Rodrigues
Starring: Paul Hamy, Xelo Cagiao, João Pedro Rodrigues
Genre: Drama (homoerotic content)
Duration: 117 mins
João Pedro Rodrigues’ The Ornithologist restages the myth of Saint Anthony of Padua as a bird-watching expedition gone awry. After Fernando capsizes his canoe, he meets a strange group of characters – manipulative Chinese missionaries, a deaf-mute shepherd named Jesus, a topless woman on horseback – who all in one way or another contribute or compel him into a religious/sexual awakening. Both the cinematography and its subjects are beautiful and irresistibly unknowable. Some viewers may not appreciate Rodrigues’ homoerotic and playfully blasphemous modernized hagiography.