The Face You Deserve

Pedro Ponte

As self-indulgent, overly clever and stuck-in-its-own-little-world as you'd expect from Miguel Gomes' first film, but also too damn lovely and naive to not stick itself in our heartstrings like a child with ADD. You can see his entire career starting to take shape here.

João Biscaia

A Ceuta do império cinematográfico que Miguel Gomes anda a construir. Um coming-of-age ao contrário, musicado por uma crise de identidade. Preserva o encanto de, por exemplo, um Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, mas consegue ser mais realista, sem, ao mesmo tempo, entrar no realismo mágico.

tiagovitoria

I could say that Miguel Gomes is not fully understood by the critics and the public. His stories are allegories made by a person whose mind is boiling ideas and new conceptions about the world as we see it. Miguel Gomes can easily create another world or perception. How many directors are capable of doing that?

Daniel Roque

Nota-se bem a maestria e singularidade que só podiam estar presentes num filme de Miguel Gomes, mas por comparação a trabalhos posteriores, fica um tanto atrás. As ilustrações do João Fazenda são deliciosas, e a canção inicial apesar de tenebrosa, fica na cabeça durante algum tempo.

Jason

Uhhhh. Jesus. Mad immersion in a cockeyed vision. A lot of promise. The thing is it hits this closed-circuit zone of whimsy pretty early and gets trapped, though admittedly up to business for which I don't have a lot of points of reference. It fakes you out in a way that ultimately fails to pay off. The audience is slightly cheated. Stupid and maybe brilliant. A big leap from this to the revelatory August.

EdieEmm

The product of a wonderful, densely-filled mind, as yet unsure how to best express itself. Hints of the genius to come in Arabian Nights; still too much of the immaturity of Kalkitos... Gomes definitely benefits, here, from having Rivette as a bit of a cinematic frame of reference for his audience. Still, probably more a film for the already-converted than one for anyone else.

Chad Hardy

A very human film that was at times coy and often borderline charming, yet it never lost me because it was so impenetrable. I guess it was that there was no exposition to ground the allegory that I found it challenging at times (I can be easily distracted) but ultimately quite moving (the last line!), perhaps because I've just hit my early thirties and it struck a chord. I really enjoyed this one, as I did Tabu

Squashua

Starts off like a comicbook Happiness (Todd Solonz) only to go all Blue Remembered Hills on you. The little screentime given to the first part, 'Theatre', made me want to see more of that storyline and less of Part Two, 'Measles', which started well but just dragged on and on. Stuck with the film for the fairy-tale man-child feel to it but it all just plateaued out and i'm still not 100% sure what actually happened,