At almost three hours, Catarina Ruivo’s sprawling documentary seeks to halt the march of dying. When her grandmother Júlia died, she left behind a treasure trove of letters, written between 1946 and 1957 when she was residing in Mozambique, then beneath Portuguese colonial rule. Learn out by actor Rita Durão, this correspondence captures the hopes and desires of a younger lady, newly married and adapting to a international land. The voiceover is paired with Ruivo’s footage of present-day, unbiased Mozambique, photographs that breathe a second life into these messages from the previous.
The juxtaposition between Júlia’s writings and the Mozambican cityscapes remembers Chantal Akerman’s seminal News from Home (1978), through which Akerman mixed her narration of her mom’s letters with languid photographs of New York Metropolis to disclose the intricacies of the mother-daughter relationship and the rhythm of city residing. My Grandmother Trelotótó doesn’t fairly obtain such cinematic alchemy. Júlia’s letters, whereas seemingly benevolent, betray a colonial gaze that erases the hardships endured by the native inhabitants (a truth acknowledged by Ruivo in an artist’s assertion). The best way Mozambique is framed – quotidian scenes stuffed with nameless faces – seems merely illustrative; it does little to complicate or push in opposition to Júlia’s problematised perspective.
The lethargy of the Mozambique part is countered by video glimpses of Júlia’s last years again in Portugal, additionally shot by Ruivo. Right here is the place the movie feels most reviving; these moments take within the older lady as she is, curious, energetic, and stuffed with vitality. Ruivo additionally pays shut consideration to the rituals of rural life: painstaking scenes of dough being kneaded, and meal preparation. The documentary portrait might have become a protracted elegy if not for these sequences, that are crammed with a dynamism extra highly effective than phrases.
