CRITICISM WEEK
A theater director, then director of documentaries and short films, Cristèle Alves Meira – born in Montreuil (Seine-Saint-Denis), in 1983 – made her first feature film which brought her back home. That of its origins, Portugal. A winning return that earned him a competition at Critics’ Week for a simple and harsh story, the unfolding of which keeps us in a village nestled in the hollow of the mountains. A village that the men have somewhat deserted, but where the women have character, beliefs die hard, the verb of earthiness. What we sometimes feel of the “soul of a place” – which the filmmaker strives to make slightly strange, a bit offbeat – is offered to us here by the grace of a light, the vitality of the story and the magic of a picturesque image.
Alma Viva is a profound, comical and direct film which calls a spade a spade, shows the corpses in the coffins, the viscera of the fish (caught by explosive), the naked bodies of the old ladies during the toilet, such as they are, thick, heavy and damaged. A film with enigmatic outlines which manages to bring together in a single gesture the trivial and the spiritual, the harshness of everyday life and the joyful brilliance of a song. In this scene where disorder and a precarious balance reign, the violence of the feelings and the outbursts of blood are of little consequence, the humor each time deflecting the drama, sometimes transforming it into a gag. As we know, it is at funerals that the biggest laughs arise. Cristèle Alves Meira remains sensitive to these contradictions which give relief to the material. A material that she likes, in Alma Viva, to be returned in its raw state. As discovered by the little girl whose gaze guides us.
Ancestral quarrels
Her name is Salomé (admirable Lua Michel) and, like every summer, she spends her holidays in her grandmother’s family home. Here, in the middle of the Portuguese mountains, life seems unchanging, quarrels between neighbors drag on from one year to the next, and tongues are still hanging out. Silent and serious observer, the girl circulates in the middle of this small world – which brings together aunts and uncles – without being noticed too much. The spectacle of this everyday theater questions her as much as it constructs her, occupies her and torments her a little – especially the beliefs about the dead and their spirits. But this heritage, she feels it, makes up a part of herself. And perhaps, after all, she owes him that profoundly touching seriousness that one discerns in the depths of her clear eyes.
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