Romance

Guel Arraes's 2008 Brazilian film is about two actors who fall in love during a new staging of Tristan and Isolde. Wagner Moura and Leticia Sabatella play both the stage characters and the people offstage, and the film keeps blurring the line between them. The idea is simple but carefully handled: the idealised, impossible love of the play is set beside the everyday wear of a real relationship. The more the actors try to carry the fictional love into their own, the more the relationship comes apart. Arraes came from television and it shows in the rhythm; the transitions are fast and the dialogue is brisk. The best passages are the ones showing the rehearsals themselves. Marco Nanini and Jose Wilker take supporting roles. Who it's for: those who like films about the relationship between theatre and cinema. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a classic romantic comedy; this film is about where love fails and it offers no happy close.