Cançao de amor e saúde by João Nicolau

In a worn-down shopping mall, João has a key. In fact he has lots of keys, because he’s a locksmith. This mall isn’t just any mall; it’s almost abandoned, empty except for João’s key shop and a café, run by a podgy girl. From the key shop there’s a backdoor, leading to a basement where his father sits in the dark with a French dictionary, citing words of wisdom. Sometimes at night, or in João’s daydreams, this desolate commercial space turns all red and poetic, and a longhaired girl wanders around with a message.

The keys are actually the key to where this surrealistic story is going. One day a girl needs a copy of a giant key, which opens the entrance to a green park - possibly a parallel universe, far from the sad temple of keys and coffee… Clearly influenced by David Lynch, João Nicolau’s characters suddenly appear or disappear with the simple use of jump-cuts, and the dialogues are a joy if you’re into bizarre changes of subject. But where Lynch’s films have a direction, and make some kind of weird sense after all, Cancao de amor e saude gets lost in the weirdness, and never really finds the way home.

Moa Geistrand