 follows 40-year-old Helena (Raquel Castro)){kind=link}
Grief can be pretty funny. The weird details of daily life don’t stop just because the person who’s given birth to you has died. When it first looked like my mom was going to die in hospital, I went to Red Lobster. I ordered a margarita with a sidecar of Grand Marnier. I’d never seen such a thing before, a little cup of cognac dangling off the side of the margarita glass. She actually died a few nights later, after midnight. My sister and I went to a 24 hour diner. I can’t remember what we ate but the waiter asked us if we were coming from the Taylor Swift concert. We said no. The poor guy couldn’t have known where we were coming from.
Director Susan Nobre’s Cidade Rabat (now playing at the Berlin International Film Festival) follows 40-year-old Helena (Raquel Castro) around her hometown Lisbon in the first bizarrely mundane days and weeks that can come after such a deep loss. It’s not knee-slappingly funny, but Castro plays her role with a magnificent Buster Keaton stoneface that immediately qualifies this film as a comedy. Not since Renée Jeanne Falconetti in Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc has a face expressed so much. And she does it while keeping her features mostly still. She somehow shows intelligence, goofiness, curiosity, disinterest, uptightness, fun and more with the same steadfast facial expression. The same face with its big eyes magnified by glasses takes in words from funeral directors, priests, police, her family, her own reflection. It seems to only turn away from medical professionals working on a perianal abscess she develops.
After handling the details of her mom’s funeral, Helena returns to her life of co-parenting her teenage daughter with her ex-husband, and working for a film production capturing life in Reboleira, a neighbourhood poorer than the one she grew up in, Cidade Rabat. She gets drunk at a wedding and dances, but doesn’t embarrass herself. The short silent film scene of Helena ordering a highball from the wedding bartender then talking his ear off a bit was very funny to me. The drinking must be an escape, and talking to this man you’ll never see again is an escape. It can be fun to mourn undercover, talking with all the people trapped in their own lives and problems. They don’t know I’m sad and that it’s for a good reason i.e. my mother is dead.
In an interview with Variety director Nobre describes Helena’s Cidade Rabat neighbourhood and the Reboleira neighbourhood where they’re working as “fairly close geographically, but far apart socially.” Helena handles payroll for the Reboleira residents who appear as extras in the production and provides documents that can help some of them get official residency in the country. At an afterparty for the film crew and extras, they all dance tenderly, including Helena. She gets drunk and drives home.
She drives pretty carefully but an illegal u-turn catches the attention of the police. Even if your face stays stoic while you’re drunk, alcohol still smells. That strong odour does her in. She escapes jail but has to do community service in a centre that helps kids compete in sports. It doesn’t become an inspiring tale all of sudden or anything, we just get to watch her face react as she gets scolded for never doing the dishes in the centre.
Booze, her daughter’s moments of slight attitude, and other daily events make small dents in her amazing stone face but never break it. She’s by no means a sad character. She’s got a good-looking romantic interest at the start of the film, an interesting job, and a good relationship with her daughter. Her face is so resilient that the one moment it breaks is very effective. Back in her mother’s home, surrounded by her mothers untouched furniture and things, Helena breaks down crying. Her back is turned to the camera of course. This is the one moment we don’t get to stare at her face.
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