Movie by Movie, The World's Funniest Bad Reviews
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Abraham Valley (1989)
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An interminable Portuguese update of Madame Bovary
| A movie for all who found The Quince Tree Sun over-exciting. Some art-house films are slow, but this three-hour epic by 86 year-old film-maker Manoel de Oliveira looks as if it might have been directed by Geoffrey Boycott's more cautious older brother. |
| The film has the style, elegant framing, and ponderous symbolism of an early Merchant Ivory; it is a constant surprise to observe that the characters are in modern dress. There is much bad acting of the Brian Blessed/ Simon Callow school - ie phoney, uproarious laughter in response to lines which not even the studio audience for The Danny Baker Show could find amusing. |
| Although the story of Emma Bovary is all about sex, this film has all the eroticism of a February edition of Country Life. The job of the leading lady (Leonor Silveira) is to look elegant, enigmatic and backlit, while the men around her pontificate in a manner which one can only hope was intended to be foolish and pompous. |
| It would be possible to be more positive, were it not for an intrusive voice-over by the director himself, which strives to be poetic but succeeds only in being prosaic and pretentious. The subtitle-writers have outdone themselves in rendering these utterances preposterous. "Disappointed by Osorio's absence," intones the narrator weightily, "Emma put on a boiler suit." |
| When, more than two hours into this three-hour ordeal, the voice-over assured us that "Emma was intent on stepping up the pace of her existence," I regret to report that this brought forth hollow laughter from that hard core of critics still awake. |
| (Chris Tookey, Sunday Telegraph) |
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