Sostiene Pereira (老馬有種)

It's often said that there's nothing in this world which feels better than a good meal, where the various ingredients of the meal are perfectly marinated, cooked at the right temperature, presented with the right but not excessively ornate crockery and matching serving utensils and served unhurriedly at the right moment and enjoyed at leisure and whose taste is complimented by the just the right kind of wine. That's how I felt when I left the Agnes B studio of Arts Centre last night after seeing a film. It's a 1995 Italian film called "Sostiene Pereira" which is co-adapted for the cinema by the Italian director Roberto Faena and Antonio Tabucchi for the latter's novel same name.

It's a simple story of how step by step the calm and unremarkable life of Pereira ( Marcello Mastroianni  ) an aging widowed, apolitical Italian journalist with a pot belly and a heart problem who has been working as a journalist for some 30 years and now the editor of the cultural page of a Portuguese newspaper "El Lisboa" was transformed by meeting Monteiro Rossi (Stefano Dionisi), a young down and out compatriot who found his way into 1938 Lisbon, the Portuguese capital then under the rising tide of Fascism under its then premeir Antonio de Olivera Salazar when the latter was trying to establish what he called the "Estado Novo", (new stage/state), using propaganda, censorship, intimidation, secret police, the army and more and more blatant violence and other strong-arm tactics. .

As the film opens, we see Pereira taking a leisurely stroll by the seaside promenade at the Lisbon harbor reading his newspapers but his mind was not with him. For some days now, he has been troubled by the question of death. He went to see his Father António (Nicolau Breyau) his confessor who had previously promised to give him, two minutes of his time, just before mass was about to begin. He told him that of late he had been bothered by the question of what would happen if the time came when the soul was to be resurrected: he was in doubt as to whether it would be resurrected with his now debilitated body with its belly and all. He was dismissed by his father confessor shaking his head and rolling up his eyes heaven-wards and when he was kneeling down in front of the altar to receive the Holy Eucharist, he was deliberately passed over and had to make a special effort to Father Antonio to insist that he wanted it too. He was reluctantly given his "sanctified wafer ". That evening, he got an invitation to hear his compatriot sing an Italian song at a club that he frequented. It was there that he met young Monteiro Rossi, a philosopher major who wrote a thesis on death. They got talking. He was with his lively girl friend Marta (Nicoletta Braschi)
There was something in the young man's eyes and face that exuded a certain enthusiasm for life which somehow intrigued him. He would have been the age of his son had his wife survived him and he probably saw in him the way he was when he himself was still young. Once Monteiro Rossi learned that he was a newspaper editor, he gave him an article and asked him if he would publish it. He read it : it's about Gabriele D'Annunzio and although he didn't like its leftist tone, he agreed to give the young man a chance as a "trainee" to help him write up "advance obituaries" of notable literary figures who are still alive just in case they should for some reason suddenly die. The young man wrote first one piece, then another about Marinetti which Pereira all rejected because he considered as he said, with his "eyes open" that their radical anti-Fascist tone would render them completely unpublishable in the kind of conservative atmosphere of Portugal of those days. He told Monteiro that he was only interested in pure literature, not any politics after hearing that  Monteiro was in Portugal because he was helping his cousin Bruno Rossi to round up volunteers for the Republicans fighting General Franco in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, he told him he could do anything he liked but he could not sully his literary pages with politics. Then Monteiro said he was badly in need of money and asked for an "advance "which Pereira reluctantly gave, once and then a second time. A little later, Monteiro telephoned Pereira and told him that he had no place to stay and hadn't even drank any water or eaten for days and asked if he could put him up. He refused but gave him the name of a friend who could help.

Then Pereira went to see a doctor about his weight problem, one Dr.Cardos ( Daniel Auteuil) who asked him all sorts of questions about his intimate sexual life. They seemed to get along and Pereira confessed to  Dr. Cardoso his anxieties about death and his encounter with Monteiro. Dr. Cardoso suggested to him he believed in the theory of  "confederation of souls", in which each person is supposed to have many souls, all vying with each other for control and that although Pereira did not agree with the ideas of young Monteiro, it was possible that deep down one of his souls, he himself was trying to change his routine of talking to his wife's photo everyday as if she were still alive and striking out for a new direction. He suggested that the fact that he helped Monteiro despite himself might be a sign that another one of his soul was trying to take over. He ruminated about it. On the way back he met a Portuguese lady in the same compartment. She was reading Thomas Mann. Then when it was time for lunch. He joined her at her table at the dining car and learned that she is married woman Ingeborg Delgado (Marthe Keller)  and intimated that she would probably have to leave Portugal soon although she was a Portuguese Jew born and bred there because she could feel that it was getting a bit hot for her people. Her sentiments were more or less the same as Dr. Carduso who thought of emigrating to France, which he thought was a country where individual liberty was much more sacred. 

Then suddenly, he got a call from Monteiro who asked him to put up his cousin Bruno Rossi. Reluctantly, he agreed but soon, three Fascist secret police arrived without any warrant for search and beat Manuel to death. When he told them that he would report the matter to the police, he was told that they were the police and when leaving told Pereira that he saw nothing. This proved to be the last straw. He wrote a piece denouncing the illegal violence happening at his flat and passed the piece to his editor in chief who said it was not suitable for printing on the literary page. He agreed but said that it ought to printed on the front page. But is superior was doubtful and said that the minister of propaganda and information Mayor Lourenco would probably not like it. But Pereira told him that he already talked about it with Lourenco and that the latter agreed that it ought to be published. Seeing that his boss Pedro (Mário Viegas) did not agree, he told him that the minister Lourenco was his classmate at the University and if Pedro like, he could speak to him to seek confirmation. Then he made a telephone call and asked his boss to talk to him. His boss did. And the article was put on the front page of the El Lisboa. In fact, before that, he had secretly arranged for Dr. Carduso to impersonate the minister, something he was more than happy to do. He had to do so using the telephone at the Cafe Orquieda which he used as his daily dining hall because his telephone had already been tapped and spied upon by the concierge Celestera (Teresa Madruga)  whose husband is a police officer. He was assisted by the captain at the cafe Manuel (Joaquim de Almeida), who often whispered to Pereira him the latest news of what the Fascists are doing. After having his piece published, Pereiras suddenly felt a certain lightness in his heart while walking in the streets of Lisbon under the sun after he had decided that it was time to leave Portugal forever. He hadnt' feel like that for years. Where would he be going to, we don't know. But we see a smile on his face and a spring in every of his steps. He was young again.

The acting by Marcello Mastroianni was superb. He fully portrayed the timorous Pereira content to live only in the past and not to have anything in his settled routine disturbed but finally waking up to what he had always wanted to do for a long time but somehow couldn't summon up sufficient courage so to do. For his acting, he won the David di Donatello Awards 1995 as Best Actor. The gradual change in the political atmosphere in Selasazian Portugal of the late 1930s is skilfully suggested by Feana by shooting scenes at the start of the film  from the window of a tram of a group of soldiers opening beating up protesters at the side of the street with truncheons and then from time to time from a respectful distance of the uniformed soldiers marching up the streets, on horseback and army trucks and in social clubs and finally portraying three rows of uniformed and capped children aged 8 to 11 being trained march like formation in the streets below Pereira's office. And the music by Ennio Morricone is haunting yet exudes a vaguely threatening undertone, exactly matching the mood of the film. I expected nothing less from Morricone.

Here's the lyrics of that haunting song:

A Brisa do coração

Lua que brilha branca na manhã
Sobre o mercado dos melões de Ouro
Curiosa espreita as casas cor de rosa
À procura do nosso tesouro

O segredo a descobrir está fechado em nós
O tesouro brilha aqui embala o coração mas
Está escondido nas palavras e nas mãos ardentes
Na doçura de chorar nas carícias quentes

No brilho azul do ar uma gaivota
No mar branco de espuma sonoro
Curiosa espreita as velas cor de rosa
À procura do nosso tesouro

O segredo a descobrir está fechado em nós
O tesouro brilha aqui embala o coração mas
Está escondido nas palavras e nas mãos ardentes
Na doçura de chorar nas carícias quentes