This wistful Portuguese film is a pointillist portrait of a nuclear family over the course of an eventful year; it has plenty of earthy flavour, perhaps like the wine the paterfamilias of the story, Otávio (Miguel Frazão), produces on his small plot in hills above the Douro river. In oenological terms, you can really taste the terroir – the land on which it’s made – with notes of nostalgia and melancholy and a tangy, slightly humorous spice. But there’s also maybe a touch too much sweetness in the blend, given writer and director Antonio Sequeira’s script occasionally slips into a tannic, sentimental theatricality. If it weren’t for the fact that the stunning landscape plays such an integral part in the film’s atmosphere you’d assume that this must have started as a stage play given the tidy scene breaks, dividing the story into four consecutive seasons.
In the first act, Otávio and his wife, Susana, (Elsa Valentim) are busy preparing to say goodbye to their eldest child Tomas (Salvador Gil), who is about to go off to university in London. As Tomas packs and Susana fusses trying to find the mislaid bongos he wants to bring with him, Otávio comforts himself by treading his grape harvest with his own feet – an old-school method that could be done in seconds, as Tomas says, if he hired in some equipment. Younger sister Belinha (Beatriz Frazao, who does the most convincing job of ageing over the course of the movie), worries about surviving the coming year with her annoying parents without Tomas around to take some of the heat. The act ends, like each of the subsequent segments, with the family seeing Tomas off on the train. By the spring, he’s back home with a new girlfriend (Krupa Narci Givane) whose Portuguese is not good enough to understand Otávio’s racist jokes, much to the younger characters’ relief.
