Review: Unfolding in reverse, ‘The Tsugua Diaries’ might be 2022’s most glorious summer movie

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Review: Unfolding in reverse, ‘The Tsugua Diaries’ might be 2022’s most glorious summer movie latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-06-03/the-tsugua-diaries-review-august By Justin ChangFilm Critic June 3, 2022 6:09 PM PT

4 de junho de 2022

Carloto Cotta, Crista Alfaiate and João Nunes Monteiro in the movie “The Tsugua Diaries.”

(KimStim) In one of the loveliest sequences in “The Tsugua Diaries,” a sly, summery delight from Portugal, two men and a woman raise a series of wooden beams. As they work together — patiently, intuitively, almost wordlessly — the structure they’re building gradually takes shape, and so, piece by piece, does this wondrously playful and mysterious movie. At one point midscene, the woman cautiously turns her head away from one of the men, who has a bandana wrapped around his face. You’ll recognize the gesture; maybe you’ve done it yourself over the last few years, one of countless little coping measures during a time of infrequent togetherness and prolonged isolation. Directed by the Lisbon-based filmmakers Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes (who co-wrote the script with Mariana Ricardo), “The Tsugua Diaries” is a pandemic-lockdown movie about a pandemic-lockdown movie. It was shot on a Portuguese farm between August and September 2020, and it tells the story of a film production operating under the same low-budget, protocol-heavy circumstances. The woman, Crista Alfaiate, and the men, Carloto Cotta and João Nunes Monteiro, are actors playing actors. The farm is an open-air set, as well as a set-within-a-set. As we watch these three build a butterfly house, 1/3


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