After being released from prison, Luciano (Ricardo Trepa) finds work
with wealthy Alfreda (Leonor Silveira) as her driver/right-hand man. It is
Alfreda's greatest wich to have a vision of the virgin Mary, which seems
to Luciano as a mere whim at first, but soon he realizes it is an actual
fixation, & not only that, she has even employed a scholar, professor
Heschel (Michel Piccoli) to help her make it come true ... & she is
obsessed with the thought, that Mary was not a poor, simple woman - as is
common belief - but in fact a wealthy woman just like Alfreda herself - as
some parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls (some additional gospels that never
made their way into the actual bible & are not acknowledged by the
church) hint at.
After a time, her fixation even becomes disquieting, especially given
her frailty, so when Luciano meets his old friend from prison, Filipe the
Forger (Luís Miguel Cintra) - now Alfreda's husband's piano tuner -
again, the two of them come up with an idea ... why not give Alfreda what
she wants, meaning staging an apparition of the virgin Mary, just to make
her feel better.
Soon, preparations are on the way, & eventually even a girl is
found that looks the part, Abril (Leonor Baldaque) - whom Filipe
eventually falls in love with -, but it's hard for the three of them to
keep up with the expectations Alfreda has for her apparition. Then
professor Heschel dkies, & Filipe, who has some idea about the Bible
& the Dead Sea Scrolls, does his best to fill his place ... but
eventually, Alfreda has a stroke & falls into a coma, & according
to her will, her husband takes his comatose wife to some of the holy
places she has chosen, like the St Mark's Cathedral in Venice &
Jerusalem, all the time not knowing if she notices even a thing ...
It's only backat home that alfreda eventually comes true, & speaks
of a near death experience - & somehow this experience has totally
erradicted her wish to see Virgin Mary ... & somehow, the apparition
that Luciano & Filipe wanted to stage never came into being, but
Filipe got Abril as his girlfriend ot of it.
This might sound like grand drama, but actually, Espelho is more like a
light comedy - that refuses to go for any cheap jokes though - with some
satire about the wealthy society of rural Portugal thrown in (first &
foremost in the character of Alfreda, who desperately wants
Mary to be a wealthy women to be more like her, & thinks she deserves
an apparition because she could offer Virgin Mary a great conversatin she
might enjoy). All that said though, the film tends to be a bit overlong
(137 minutes), especially since the beginning, circa half an hour about
Luciano in jail, does have little to do with the rest of the story, &
thus the real story kicks into gear relatively late.
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