Pick of the week: Rapturous 19th-century soap “Mysteries of Lisbon”

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:01:00 +0000

My first reaction, after spending more than four hours lost amid the seductions, betrayals, hidden identities and intersecting family histories of Raúl Ruiz's magnificent two-part film "Mysteries of Lisbon," was that I had to go learn Portuguese so I could read Camilo Castelo Branco's novel before watching the movie again. (If Castelo Branco's 1854 "Os Mistérios de Lisboa" has ever been translated into English, neither Amazon nor the New York Public Library has it.) Since that's not happening in this lifetime, I'll have to make do with repeat viewings of Ruiz's dense and intoxicating 19th-century soap, which is something like a mixture of Dickens, Balzac, French costume drama and Mexican telenovela.

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Pick of the week: Rapturous 19th-century soap “Mysteries of Lisbon”