Lines of Wellington (威靈頓戰線)

My 16th  film at the HKIFF The Lines of Wellington is a condensed version of what originally was intended as a mini TV series about one of the Napoleonic Wars called the Battle of Bassasco (1810), a project first started by the Chilean director Raúl Ruíz who later died and then completed by his widow  Valeria Sarmiento. It centres on events around the Battle of Bassasco (1810). Its cast is literally a who's who in European cinema: Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Pérez,
Marisa Paredes, Chiara Mastroianni, Melvil Poupaud, Michel Piccoli, Elsa
Zylberstein, Christian Vadim. Vincent Lindon, Malik Zidiuopean and John Malkovich. 

It's a rambling tale consisting of many interweaving story lines following the very different fates of about a dozen motley characters:a Portuguese soldier poet Zé Maria (José Afonso Pimentel) , a Portuguese lieutenant Tenente Pedro de Alencar (Carlotto Catta), his Sergeant 'Chico' Francisco Xavier (Nuno Lopes) who finally succeeded in winning the woman of his heart, a scholar Vicente de Almeida (Filipe Vargas) who lost his wife Maureen (Jemina West), a teenage boy suffering from Parkinson's disease (João Arrais)   who is constantly abused by a tinkler, a portrait loving Duke Wellington (John Malkovich)  a teenage English flirt whose father had a vineyard in Portugal, an English Major Jonathan Foster (Marcello Urgeghe), another Portuguese lady who is the wife D Filipa Sanchez ( Maria Paredes) of a rich local merchant (Michel Piccoli) two ladies including the warm hearted Clarissa (Victória Guerra) who had to survive by entertaining soldiers, a local farmer Manuel Penabranca (Miguel Borges) who had to abandon his farm and who helped build the giant fortifications at a place called Torres  where the combined English and Portuguese were awaiting the arrival of the advancing French soldiers under Marshal Masséna (Melvil Poupaud) whose troops far outnumbered the combined forces of England and Portugal, and whose son died as a result of a collapsed wall he helped to build from the explosion of a bomb.

We are shown how the army of refugees consisting of rich and poor had to trail along in their retreat further and further inland with the advance of the French soldiers, burning everything along the way so that the French soldiers would have no supplies and hopefully defeated by sickness and hunger, how some soldiers from both sides deserted, how married, unmarried and even old ladies are raped, how some women had to survive by offering themselves as playmates of those who could supply their daily needs, how ordinary people had to harden their hearts against others in need, how rich young girls found the war a chance to break out from strict surveillance by their governesses, how other girls became nun caring selflessly for the wounded and the orphaned, how petty merchants profiteered  from the situation by asking for exorbitant prices for their wares, how they offered little for what was obviously worth much more, how the ordinary people would stick together in digging trenches, building fortifications in defence of their homeland, how young kids wanted nothing but to be big enough to become soldiers like some members of their family's relatives when they meet again, how the rich would continue to wine and dine and hold parties, how some generals were concerned merely for winning battles "elegantly" with minimal loss of lives of their own and even their enemies' soldiers, how battles could be won or retreat executed by bluffs and trickery and bluffs and how thinking soldiers could become disillusioned by the realities of war.

The film's dialogues switches without warning from English, to Portuguese, to French and sometimes two of the three languages according to whether we are shown the action of characters coming from which the three countries involved in that tragedy called by revolutionary war. It's scope is that of an epic but we are shown such short snippets in the lives of the different characters that we can never get quite involved or moved with their plight. The only two moving scenes for me are one in which the Portuguese soldier-poet who had become a deserter and the Portuguese lieutenant who lost contact with his soldiers because of two bullet in his head and who escaped from the hospital and later recovered joined hand to kill off two of the solider-poet's men who wanted to commit necrophilian sex with two recently dead women lying at the side of a road and the final scene in which a local farmer asked for permission to build a grave within the fortification for his only son because he helped build it and died within it when the wounded lieutenant who finally managed to rejoin his troops granted his request and gave him a military burial with full honors.

War is opportunity to meet dashing young men in uniform who promise romance and adventure for rich young ladies, an event which force less fortunately placed young women to sell their youth and their physical charm for bread and butter,  for aristocratic officers to win glory and honour, and for the rank and file soliders, it meant long marches, starvation, life and death struggle and opportunities for unbridled sex if they got the chance, for the established upper echelon of society, an unwelcome need to be subjected to the indignities of having to leave one's homes, for crafty and opportunistic merchants, plenty of chances chance to make an unconscionable profit, for the religious nuns dedicated to God, opportunities to display self-less sacrifice to glorify his name and for the ordinary farmers and their wives, hard work and loss or separation of fathers, mothers, children and for poets, numerous occasions for reflection on the vicissitudes and hypocrisies of terrestrial life. This is what I gather from watching this 151-minute historical epic done in costume. Apart from the initial battle in which the English and the Portuguese joined forces to fight the French at the Battle of Bussaco, both sides suffering massive deaths and maimings, there is not much real battle. The French withdrew when they saw the size of the fortifications at Torres (three lines of fortification stretching some 47 Kilometer,  the idea of Duke Wellington) after having positioned themselves for an attack for a number of days: then planted the figures of some straw soldiers on guard at their camp but under the cover of darkness, silently retreated. What the director seem to want to say is that there are no real victors in a war. But there is a bit of humor too. I now know the origin of the recipe called "Beef Wellington", Wellington himself being portrayed in the movie as a narcissistic and fastidious man obsessed with how he may look to posterity by soliciting the aid of a painter called Leveque with whose portraits, he had nothing but complaints. It's a panoramic view of one of the Napoleonic wars and its effects on the lives of all those affected. It's not a flattering picture. II it shows anything, its shows the emptiness of any pyrrhic "victories". There are really no winners in any war.