VIVER MAL
(LIVING BAD)
Dir. João Canijo, 2023.
Portugal, France. 124 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MAY 8 - 9:30 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 10 - 7:30PM

VIVER MAL didn’t emerge through a process of dramatic work-shopping like MAL VIVER. The more episodic sister film to MAL VIVER came as idea to Canijo during MAL VIVER’s filming as the filmmaker began to wonder was happening in the lives of the hotel’s guests, seen only in the previous film in brief glimpses, at the edge of the frame, and heard through off-camera dialogue. In VIVER MAL, the stories of the guests, adapted from the August Strindberg plays "Playing with Fire” (1893), “The Pelican” (1907), and “Motherly Love” (1892) take center stage. The drama of the central family is moved to the background, but they are not entirely absent. In fact, more about their situation is revealed in clever and unexpected ways. The stories of the guests in VIVER MAL intersect and overlap each other and intersect and overlap the story of MAL VIVER, giving rise to strange connections and uncanny repetitions. The sound design utilizes layers of overlapping off-screen dialogue, often shouts, screams and replays of arguments from the previous film and from earlier in this film. Sometimes we can place them and sometimes we can’t, but they are unrelenting and inescapable, reinforcing the idea of an unbreakable cycle of trauma which forms the essential link in the two films.