Viver Mal - English subtitled
In the finale of his diptych, João Canijo continues on the gloomy track he laid out in Mal Viver. This time, the director puts hotel guests under his filleting knife. Ingmar Bergman looks on approvingly from the afterlife.
In MAL VIVER, the hotel guests remained in the background; in counterpart VIVER MAL, they become the unit of analysis of director Canijo. Using Ingmar Bergman’s films and August Strindberg’s stage work as examples, director João Canijo continues on the theme of MAL VIVER: the unmasking of maternal love as cold selfishness and emotional blackmail. The film, which can also be watched separately from part one, takes guests’ emotions to the boiling point. And again, mothers take the lead in the psychological warfare. Júlia’s mother, for instance, deploys emotional blackmail to drive a wedge between her daughter and her friend Alice. And Elisa shamelessly plunges into an affair with her daughter’s husband Graça.
Canijo shot his diptych in one go, allowing the different storylines to seamlessly flow together. As a viewer, though, you have to be resistant to Canijo’s deeply gloomy view of the human race.