‘The Seasons’ Locarno Review: A Poetic Journey Through Portugal’s Alentejo
Weaving together accounts of rural workers and field notes of a couple of archaeologists, Maureen Fazendeiro’s film is a journey through the real history and the tales of a region in southern Portugal, Alentejo, and a portrait of the people who have lived there.
A frequent collaborator of Miguel Gomes on films such as The Tsugua Diaries —which she co-directed— and Grand Tour —which she co-wrote—, Maureen Fazendeiro presents this beautiful and quintessentially Portuguese blend of documentary and fiction that journeys through the Alentejo region. On one hand, it captures everyday life and work in the countryside, while some locals share stories and sing traditional folk songs. Adding to the mix of The Seasons are letters from German archaeologists conducting research in the area during the 1940s, a few brief fictional moments, and some of the region’s legends and curiosities.
Her second film this year (the previous one, Les Habitants, was a medium-length work shown at Cinéma du Réel), The Seasons bears the traits of an observational film, one that seeks to weave together the past and present of this region from which Fazendeiro hails. Sheep give birth, neighbors sing verses from long ago and from the time of the revolution, farmers go about their work, children visit caves with prehistoric paintings, another local recounts the legend of a supposed bandit, and all the while the film returns again and again to the German archaeologists exchanging letters about the dolmens and other megalithic phenomena they studied in the area —inspirations for a work that plays like a form of modern archaeology linking past and present.
Some archival footage of the area and from the time of the Carnation Revolution —touching on the theme of land ownership, which runs through the entire film— rounds out this sort of documentary essay, part memoir, part poetic observation of a territory and its people, a place deeply tied to the director’s own life. It’s a chronicle of the land across eras and how the interplay of reality, myth, and legend continues into the present. Fazendeiro captures this mingling of time at moments through long takes that seem to travel across centuries, beginning in the present and ending in the past, or vice versa. A shot of grazing animals, for example, appears to dissolve into a scene that could have taken place decades —or even centuries— earlier.
As Estações may not mark a radical break from similar films portraying and tracing rural and folk histories throughout Portugal. Recent works like Fogo do Vento or A Savana e a Montanha, among many others, have given rise to a whole subgenre that also incorporates non-professional actors, 16mm imagery, and oral traditions passed down through myth, poetry, and music. Yet it nevertheless joins what has by now become a noble tradition of human —and humanist— portraits exploring the history and present of that beautiful and complex country.
