Swan (Cisne) by Teresa Villaverde

What is immediately appealing and at the same time knotty with a film like Swan is that there is no specific point of view that we are meant to follow. The clues given on the characters are limited, clearly not enough to provide a sufficient background for the audience to decode. Vera sits in the centre of the narrative, a mysterious protagonist who discloses little, even when she sings. The people orbiting around her are also distant creatures themselves, subtly influencing her trajectory. It does not come as a surprise when Vera quotes Portuguese writer Maria Gabriela Llansol – one of the director’s favourites: the unsupported supports itself by the lack of support I read or I am reading – a poem is unsupported. This is a story about people who need a hand from the ones who suffer equally. Llansol’s quote is open to interpretation, but it undoubtedly sets the contextual thread and prepares us for a certain aesthetic lyricism that requires reading between the lines.

Despite its low production values, Swan strikes with some beautiful imagery and a sort of visual poetry in parts. However, its verse has no clear direction; scenes are elliptical and jump cuts indulge in reverberating earlier scenes. Still, if traditional narrative techniques give way to the joining of scattered dots, the film’s core message is communicated. Essentially it is about people growing up and learning how to help each other do so. Both Vera and Sam are artists, curious about the world, sensitive, histrionic and overtly romantic. Their inquisitiveness allows encounters with characters from completely different worlds. Vera has Pablo - he has Vera, as well as the street kids who come under his protection. Meanwhile, Sam crosses paths with a dwarf who shows him the way to uncomplicated warmth.

It is rather ironic how these side characters - representing drifters who tend to pass unnoticed - are the ones who save the protagonists from their dark vulnerability. Despite their immediate differences, there is a strong link chaining them together: that of the urgent need to make a better living. But it is also Lisbon. There is no dwelling on the city’s aesthetical attractions, but it is the periphery that matters here instead; that small café on the corner that invites a man and a woman to dance.

Swan is one of those films that could irk you for being too personal and at times impenetrable. This is not necessarily a case of pretentiousness (as one could easily pass judgement on), but of an organic process. For Villaverde, filmmaking is an experiential process - her films tending to become more in synch with her own idiosyncrasy. Still, that does not prevent us from walking along with her, hand in hand, following her stream of thoughts like good listeners. Even if we don’t get it every time.

By Eftihia Stefanidi