An entertainment with substance, “that does not leave the viewer feeling like they are watching something silly,” added the filmmaker.
Starring Sara Matos, ‘O pátio da saudade’ is “a story about friendship, resilience, and the ability to have a dream and not give up on achieving it,” emphasized the director.
Ten years ago, Leonel Vieira directed ‘O leão da Estrela’ and ‘O pátio das cantigas’, two productions “with a new look at films from the 1940s”. In 2016, he revisited the genre with “A canção de Lisboa”, which he produced, handing over the direction to Pedro Varela. His version of “O pátio das cantigas” remains the most-watched Portuguese film since 2004, according to the Cinema and Audiovisual Institute rankings.
With ‘O pátio da saudade’, Leonel Vieira focuses on the musical theater. To begin with, concerning the previous films, he believes he did not make ‘remakes’, but rather films “that respected the spirit of 1940s cinema, with a new look”.
Regarding this “new patio”, he ensures it is a story “about friendship”, about “people coming together to save things”, the director stressed during the film’s presentation today, in Lisbon; coming together for “causes, which is something very much at risk these days – people coming together to save common causes”, he added.
‘O pátio da saudade’ talks about “values that we are losing a bit today or that we think we are losing”, Leonel Vieira said.
The film’s action centers around an actress (Sara Matos) who inherits a theater from a distant aunt she barely knew and who was a fan of musical theater. The viability of inheriting this old mansion, however, comes with the condition of restoring it and staging a revue.
When asked if this film is a “kind of homage to the musical theater”, Leonel Vieira admits it is “a look at the past”.
“The past cannot be lost,” he stated. “It is not just about today, who we are today and ‘today is everything (…) and the past is to erase, and the old are to be done away with'”. For Leonel Vieira, that cannot be, emphasizing that such a stance towards life “bothers him greatly”.
‘O pátio da saudade’ is, therefore, a film about the “past that matters”, since “the past is part of our present and needs to be brought into our present and rethought”. And “nothing is disposable”, he reinforced.
When asked if ‘O pátio da saudade’ is the film he indeed thought he would make, the director said films “are never what” he imagines, but rather “an approximation”.
This film, in which each character was thought precisely for the actor/actress representing them, “is quite close to what I thought could be done”, he concluded.
When asked if he expects a success similar to what he achieved with ‘O pátio das cantigas’, the director expressed hope for the new film’s success, refusing, however, to expect it to match what he achieved 10 years ago, as that was “an occasional phenomenon, which sometimes happens”.
Regarding new projects, Leonel Vieira mentioned that in September, he will premiere a new series, also featuring Sara Matos, on the HBO streaming platform.
Leonel Vieira is in post-production on the series ‘Vitória’, which he directs, and which also stars Daniela Ruah, with a script by Alexandre N. Rodrigues and Manuel Prates.
Among recent productions and co-productions by Leonel Vieira are “Vìrgenes”, by Álvaro Díaz Lorenzo, a film premiered at the Málaga Festival last spring, and the series “Favàtrix”, launched in May in Spain.
‘O pátio da saudade’ features performances by José Raposo, José Pedro Vasconcelos, Gilmário Vemba, Alexandra Lencastre, José Pedro Gomes, and Ana Guiomar, among other actors. The script is by Aldo Lima, Manuel Prates, Alexandre N. Rodrigues, and Leonel Vieira himself; the soundtrack by Manuel Palha and Tiago Perestrelo, according to the technical sheet available online.
