Paths

The film is built from stories that run parallel to one another. In each of them a young couple is escaping cruel figures imposed on them as fathers. The couples travel through different regions of the country. The time shifts towards the present from one story to the next. The account builds no straight plot; it stands between fairy tale and folk story. Images of baptism and of birth recur inside it. That the flight never ends sits at the centre of the story. The hundred and twenty minutes are shared among these parallel lines. Carmen Duarte and Manuela de Freitas appear in João César Monteiro’s Portuguese film, completed in 1978.