It’s the 1980s and Portugal is living in the post-revolutionary period with all the disappointments that entails. Yes, the fascists have apparently gone, but the bosses are still squeezing the workers and the bourgeoisie still rule the roost. Unemployment is rising every year and there is desperation as families can’t make ends meet. So perhaps the fascists haven’t really gone at all. Perhaps the Carnation Revolution hasn’t gone far enough.
One far left group FP25 decides that the revolution needs to continue; to be completed. They’ll live in the underground, break the law, hide their identities, sacrifice everything, living under the fear of arrest or death. But also in love with the glamour of it all.
Ivo Ferreira’s latest film is a political thriller to some extent based on his own experience growing up in the far left ambience of his family. Jani Zhao plays Rosa, an actress and single parent and a full time revolutionary. She is at the forefront of the military wing of the group, moving from vandalism to bombings, bank robberies to raise funds and political assassinations. The group might be violently earnest but their capabilities aren’t always up to the task. One robbery goes particularly poorly, leaving a number of their group dead or in prison.
It’s easy to forget these days that terrorism was as much a part of the 1980s as Ultravox and Sylvester Stallone. The IRA in Britain as well as Northern Ireland; the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Red Brigades in Italy were all active throughout the decade, committing spectacular acts of political violence. Most of the groups had grown out of the radical politics of the 1960s, the hopes and dreams of which had curdled into a stagnant reality of ossified labour relations and corrupt politicians. Ferreira suggests that there is a sense that Rosa and her comrades are half in love with their own revolutionary chic. There’s an eroticism to the violence and the intensity of the relationships which the revolutionaries have with each other and which Rosa even feels for one of the policemen pursuing her. Like Olivier Assayas’ Carlos, there’s a suggestion of political violence as a lifestyle choice. Maybe Rosa is not making all these sacrifices to pursue her political ends, but she’s pursuing her stated political ends to give her the excuse to make her sacrifices.
Without ever giving in to outright ridicule, Ferreira and his co-writer Hélder Beja are alive to the ridiculous in the situation. The people who FP25 are supposedly fighting for seem to despise them and they are almost lynched by a mob when a robbery goes pear-shaped. During a secret meeting, none of the revolutionaries can keep their balaclavas on for more than a few seconds because they’re all chain smoking. During my own time with the radical left, I noticed a tendency of comrades to chain smoke and never ask themselves under what conditions the tobacco they smoked was farmed and exported. Ultimately, there is a sense that time has passed them by and even the police investigator who pursues them does so with a sense more of exasperation than anger.
The period detail is rich and well observed and Vasco Viana’s camera captures the moody light of the smoke hideouts – God so smoky – and the early morning meetings. Some set pieces play out with the thrill of a heist movie – a jailbreak is a particular highlight. And yet over everything hangs the pall of inevitable defeat and the sense that protagonists had become trapped in a fatal spiral of playacting.
Projecto Global premiered at the 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam.
