Sangue do meu sangue2011

Strike "The unbearable lightness of being" - this is "The unbearable closeness of being" for a family in Portugal. Swings from Almodovarish heights, including the melodramatic soap opera, to jarring consequences for the choices the characters make, but with an utterly realistic, not at all cartoonish, believe-ability. The cinematography, acting, and direction are beautifully accurate to a script that conveys the world of a part of Lisbon culture through the lens of several characters.

There are two ways to watch this film - with judgement or without judgement. Either way, you are likely to be engaged in an existence where some currencies are more accessible than others, where the eternal struggle between the sexes (at least thus far) has adapted to a world where the society's value for these impoverished men and women is quite small , but where their value to other members of their family is tremendous. This film portrays a life lived in such a crowded household that the pretense of privacy is variably observed as a survival condition for coexistence, and where deceits often carry meta-meanings to people who live so closely and intensely that they have developed flexibly adaptive intimacies. The film examines a culture where gender roles hold shadows, sometimes dark shadows of past traditional roles but the economic underpinnings of those roles has no reliability, and hence where power has been realigned.

If nothing else, it feels like an honest film.