Arabian Nights, Vol 2: The Desolate One review – austerity-age cinematic poetry

In the second serving of Miguel Gomes’s potent trilogy, Scheherazade narrates tales of a killer turned folk hero, judicial madness and a stray dog

And so Miguel Gomes’s poetic trilogy continues: elegant, mystifying and demure, inspired by Portugal’s miseries under austerity and by The Arabian Nights. This middle section is the “desolate” one, as opposed to the “restless” first episode or the “enchanted” third part, yet to come. The desolation manifests itself in the final five minutes, although it perfumes the entire film. As before, Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate) narrates and we hear three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal (there is a gigantic epic somewhere out there, of which this huge trilogy is just a sample). There are erotic images of naked women, a visual rhyme for the young virgins of Baghdad in the first film.

The tales are The Chronicle of the Escape of Simão “Without Bowels”; The Tears of the Judge and The Owners of Dixie. In the first, Simão is a notorious mass killer (his “without bowels” nickname is down to his thinness) who is being hunted by police with a drone camera. The narrator notes that “evil is only a severe tendency of selfishness”, and shows that public disaffection with everything turns Simão into a folk hero.

In the second, a judge is reduced to tears at a surreal, outdoor legal proceeding, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream of judicial madness. Every crime has its origin in another crime – including a rich landlord making prank emergency calls to undermine Portugal’s public health service – and the wrongdoings are impossible to disentangle.

In the third, a stray dog called Dixie is adopted by a melancholy elderly couple and given to an impoverished younger pair reliant on food banks. The effect of these movies – part realist, part dream-like – is gradual and yet very potent.

Watch excerpts from Arabian Nights, Volume 2

Contributor

Peter Bradshaw

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
Two Women review – Ralph Fiennes in bittersweet romantic intrigue
This charmingly lugubrious adaptation of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country stars Fiennes as a cerebral man who has fallen for a married woman

Peter Bradshaw

15, Sep, 2016 @9:15 PM

Article image
Heal the Living review – heart-rending tale of organ donation
Katell Quillévéré’s polished mosaic of interconnected lives is intelligently acted and visually arresting

Peter Bradshaw

26, Apr, 2017 @9:00 AM

Article image
In the Fog review – Sergei Loznitsa’s meditation on the poisonous shame of collaboration
When a Nazi collaborator is led into the Belarusian forest to be executed, why doesn't he protest? Loznitsa's lacerating film explores the agonies of war and puts European history on trial

Peter Bradshaw

25, Apr, 2013 @2:30 PM

Article image
Arabian Nights, Vol 3: The Enchanted One review – elegant Portuguese austerity marvel
The final part of Miguel Gomes’s docu-fantasy trilogy includes Scheherazade as a romantic warrior queen and an interplanetary Karen Carpenter

Peter Bradshaw

05, May, 2016 @9:15 PM

Article image
Son of Saul review – a stunning, excoriating Holocaust drama
László Nemes’s debut, about a prisoner at Auschwitz forced to work in the gas chambers, dramatises the concentration camps with great intelligence, seriousness and audacity

Peter Bradshaw

28, Apr, 2016 @2:30 PM

Article image
The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood review – Makhmalbaf's essential early film returns
The great auteur’s controversial 1990 critique of Iranian society is a rich meditation on family life, the legacy of violence and lost love

Leslie Felperin

02, Mar, 2017 @10:15 PM

Article image
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror – review
FW Murnau’s unauthorised 1922 adaptation of Dracula inspired countless thriller storytellers after him, including Hitchcock, writes Peter Bradshaw

Peter Bradshaw

24, Oct, 2013 @10:05 PM

Article image
Human Capital review – a shrewd portrait of status anxiety and avarice
Stephen Amidon’s novel of greed and family consequences is skilfully transplanted to Milan for this caustic drama, writes Peter Bradshaw

Peter Bradshaw

25, Sep, 2014 @8:44 PM

Article image
Lullaby review – bad-nanny thriller up past its bedtime
A young couple make a terrible childcare choice in this strained, unsatisfying drama based on Leïla Slimani’s bestselling novel

Peter Bradshaw

08, Jan, 2020 @4:00 PM

Article image
A Caribbean Dream review – Shakespeare goes to carnival
Shakirah Bourne’s tender-hearted adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a refreshingly low-key palate cleanser with plenty of time for its older characters

Cath Clarke

10, Nov, 2017 @6:00 AM