MAL VIVER
(BAD LIVING)
Dir. João Canijo, 2023.
Portugal, France. 127 min.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY, MAY 8 - 7 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 10 - 5 PM

The idea at first was to make MAL VIVER. The film emerged out of a process of development, work-shopping and writing with Canijo and his five lead actresses Anabela Moreira, Rita Blanco, Madalena Almeida, Cleia Almeida and Vera Barreto. It portrays the story of three generations of women who own and operate a hotel on the northern shore of Portugal. The relationships between them have grown bitter, resentful, abusive and poisonous. Canijo himself describes the film as about “the anxieties of motherhood” and acknowledges the influence of Ingmar Bergman’s mother-daughter drama AUTUMN SONATA. Anabela Moreira’s performance is particularly devastating. As the middle generation, she wrestles with her failure as both a mother and a daughter, and weathers the grief from both sides. Her portrayal of depression rings true with detail and nuance. As does her relationship with her pet dog Alma. The always redoubtable Rita Blanco gives a menacing turn as the family’s envious matriarch and the lighting by Leonor Teles gives the hotel interiors a funerary beauty and a suffocating warmth, while the compositions separate mother and daughter, using the structure of the building itself, its door frames, walls, and windows frames, to isolate and divide them.