Viajo Porque Preciso, Volto Porque te Amo (2009) User Reviews

Original idea, wonderfully done.

[runamokprods · 8/10 · 24 January 2014]

A semi experimental film that recalls Chantal Akerman's portraits of places, but here a narrative has been added on top. An unseen geologist is telling the story (writing in a diary?) of his trip to look for a place to build a canal in northern Brazil. But as he goes along he is haunted by thoughts his love waiting back home – his desire to get back to her, and his desire to flee.

We see the only super 8 films and videos he takes as he goes along, revealing landscapes, rocks, human faces and bodies. There's a gentle poetic sadness to it all that keeps a consistent, quiet, but never dull mood. Very approachable as 'experimental' films go, it captures feelings many of us have had while traveling for work – the wonderful freedom, the terrible loneliness.

Sadly, despite much looking, I've never been able to find a DVD with English subtitles. But there is a subscription site called fandor.com that does have the film for streaming with English subs.

Intriguing concept let down by staid execution

[slaytonbourdon · 4/10 · 11 April 2012]

This unique Brazilian film tells a story in the first-person, through still photos, POV shots, flashbacks, cutaways that follow a subjective train of thought and an omnipresent voice-over. The plot details a geologist studying a remote region of Northern Brazil after a traumatic breakup with is girlfriend. At first we (and he) focus on the procedural element of his job but the desolate landscape begins to stir something inside of him and ultimately the structure of the film takes on a subjective fantasy-memory-reality dynamic.

The film is put together like a collage of memories and observations, and Irandhir Santos provides a tremendously evocative voice-over that exudes heartbreak and pain even if you don't speak Portuguese. But the 'road movie through the soul' structure never really finds anything to counterbalance its inherent repetitiveness and by 2/3 through this quite short film it becomes pretty exasperating to watch - plus the ending seems like a copout, a 'live-life-to-the-fullest' message that is far too pat for a story so deeply concerned with heartache.