The Dead Queen (2018)

The legend of Pedro and Inês de Castro, known by all of the Portuguese is brought to the big screen in a lattice of three different realities that involve past, present and future.

Adapted from the novel "A trança de Inês", passed in three alternate realities, particularly in the middle ages where the original story happened, then it occurs on our present, in which Pedro (Diogo Amaral) and Inês (Joana de Verona) are prestigious architects and also in a future where people have abandoned the city and adopted a life in the forest in order to survive.

The narration of Pedro and your story during the entire movie sounds like a prose poem, because it has a reflection of events without having to explain its details. The audience does accompany in a conventional footage, almost theatrical, but stylized in a magnificent way by António Ferreira (Director of the movie), immortalized, by his art and photography. These details are important because all the three scenarios are clean, dust-free, as if all three were happening in fact as Pedro imagine, not with the separation of centuries, but in parallel.

All 3, Diogo Amaral, Joana de Verona and Vera Kolodzig do a wonderful job in this movie! I think we need to see more of this dedication on our Portuguese cinema.

The music of Luís Pedro Madeira contributes significantly to the quality of the movie, as well as the remaining technical details of photography, scenery and wardrobe. The cast also includes names like Miguel Borges, João Lagarto, Custódia Gallego, Cristóvão Campos (who also does a great job, being in my opinion the best side character of the movie) & Nuno Nolasco.

Overall "Pedro e Inês" is an exciting movie that raises the quality of the national Portuguese cinema, aimed at history fans or tragic novels lovers. It is extremely important that Portugal do more of this, enough with the cheap same old comedy typical Portuguese movie!

It's this kinda of movies, just like "Soldado Milhões" for example, which also premiered this year, that give me hope on having quality cinema in our theaters from now on!