At 67 minutes, this compact feature packs a lot of themes: climate change and environmentalism, male erotica and a gay love story, colonialism, privilege and duty, and musical numbers including a dance sequence.

Portugal has a deposed royal family, whose successors are still called "Prince". In 2011, young Prince Alfredo is taken by his father to the royal forest, where a love of (tall) trees is instilled. Sometime later, with forest fires caused by climate change in the news, Alfredo decides to become a firefighter. Volunteering with an (ironically urban) unit, he appears to skip boot camp, is assigned to a Black firefighter for training, and they fall in love.

I saw this film at its North American Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, with director Q A, which informs some of the following

There are scenes in the family dining room, where young Alfredo spars with his mother, making a speech like Greta, and having his mother calling him a republican. The room is dominated by a large painting of Black servants / slaves, which is his only valuable possession he has left when he dies in 2069. The scene is shot thru an opening that can be closed by sliding doors, suggesting that the family is acting out a staged formality, even in private.

Given that Alfredo studied art history, he is teased by the mostly-naked firemen in the locker room by their group poses for their "calendar photos" that were supposed to simulate famous paintings. Later, he is shown pictures of male genitalia, as he names what each reminds nim of.

Written before covid but shot after, the director worked coronavirus into the script. The music includes classical and Portuguese popular songs, with a joke built into one by replacing the word "fellow" with the similar-sounding "phallus". The royal forest is the remains of an actual royal forest, after most was burned by a wildfire, and he agreed with an audience member that the trees (leaves above the camera frame) can be read as phallic symbols.

My major beef with the film is that it is too short. A lot of stuff is thrown at the audience without much development, and it flashes by like, well, a will-o'-the-wisp.

I came to this via an article in the Guardian newspaper about films one hadn't seen in 2023 but should have. This one in particular intrigued me enough to seek it out and it was worth it.

I really wasn't being convinced at first, but then got the idea about the forest and the upholding of tradition of a pretender royal family conceptualised in the formal setting of their evening meals together. Duty, tradition and service outwardly were the watchwords of the day; indifference was the real mood. The former come back to haunt young Alfredo when it was his time to assume the mantle of empty kingship.

Set in two separate years, the piece was in turns moving, fun, sexy, artistic and sad. The unsimulated love scene between Alfredo and Afonso was an integral part of the flow and not grafted on for titillation, as so often happens. Its intimacy made it harder to bear for the viewer when stultifying duty called.

Two parts of the film moved me terribly. The final song sung at the funeral. And the firemen insisting that he have "a Pietà", which harked back to the tableaux fifty years earlier. That was sublime.

Thank you to the Guardian's film critic!

Fogo-Fátuo - João Pedro Rodrigues Released in 2022, Fogo-Fátuo was part of the Director's Fortnight in Cannes 2022 and selected for Sevilla Film Festival 2022.

Fogo-Fátuo is perceived as a romantic and comic film and approaches the story of Alfredo (King of Portugal), highlighting his youth and his romantic relationship with a fireman. João Pedro Rodrigues consciously decides to keep a satire tone in each scene of the film, while creating (in his own words) a "musical fantasy".

This film has a bittersweet taste. Starting with the strong points of it, in the first part of the film, the director shows us the Portuguese royal family on the intimacy of their own palace. The greatest scene of this film would be the dinner of the royal family while listening to the tragic news of the deadly fires that are destroying Portugal. Besides the beautiful composition of it - the prince in the front, the King and Queen on the side, and the two other princes that are not relevant in terms of Portugal's succession, not facing the camera - it must be emphasized the brilliant satire in it. With the voice of the current Prime Minister of Portugal talking about the fires on the television, the King of Portugal is showing no interest or care in the horrifying situation of his own country - representing a perfect and accurate picture of the Portuguese current government. While the King looks at this situation with barely disguised contempt, the Queen of Portugal, conscious that the viewer is watching the royal family (while breaking the fourth wall), shows in a very fake way, her concern about the current situation of Portugal, while blowing some candles. All this part is representing, with extreme accuracy and great humor, the current state of the Portuguese political scene - the idea of "putting on a show" and being "politically correct" in front of the viewer is amazingly portrait by Margarida Vila-Nova and Miguel Loureiro.

The other strong point of this film is the brave decision of the director to portrait Portugal and the monarchy - which was known for being extremely conservative - and combine it with a graphic homosexual love story. It should also be referred the heavy satire that João Pedro Rodrigues does to the Church, specially at the end of the film, by dressing up the two nuns with fashion items. The best part of that last scene would be the combination of this humorous moment with a classic behavior of Portuguese old ladies - the constant whisper, repetition of certain quotes and the classic overanalyzing the life of the other people.

The sweet taste of the film is brilliant enough, but then the bitter taste starts to be revealed. The constant and exhausting repetition of the "comedy" regarding penis and the sexual desire of Alfredo starts to fade the essence of the film away. From the very beginning - the scene where Alfredo and his father are in the forest - the director has a urge to compare the Portuguese forest to penis - until the very end where Alfredo is naming forest names after graphic pornographic pictures. Perhaps the goal of this is to constantly make the viewer shocked in a way that film sticks with them and, therefore, its satire.

At what point is necessary to shock the viewer, with no breaking point, with the same "joke" in order to share a specific idea or message? João Pedro Rodrigues had a brilliant and well structure satire but ended up on ruining it through exhausting and repeating scenes.