Before "Tabu" and the "Arabian Nights" trilogy catapulted him into the international limelight Miguel Gomes gave us "The Face You Deserve", his debut feature, which now seems in its quiet, phantasmagorical way something of a dry-run for the classics that followed. It's two strangely surreal episodes tenuously use the fairy tales "The Sleeping Beauty" and "The Ugly Duckling" as jumping off points though making sense of what follows may not be so easy. In many ways its like "The Arabian Nights" in miniature or something that, once upon a time, Luis Bunuel might have made. It certainly marked Gomes as a director to watch although the film itself didn't make much of an impact outside its native Portugal, (it has never received a British cinema release), and it won't appeal to a mass audience. Cineastes, however, looking for a challenge, and fans of Gomes' later work should lap it up.

The Greatest Portuguese Movie of the 21st century and one of the best in Europe at the time. Great sense of humor, incredible sets, amazing actors and the ghost of childhood always floating above our heads. The rhythm of the film is very good and we never close our eyes, because the beauty of it, doesn't let us. Great cinematography. Besides we follow the adventures of these seven "boys" with great joy and tenderness and never do we yawn.Great, great film. If this is the future of Portuguese cinema, i wanna take part on it because it is brilliant. P.s: young Portuguese directors: do not give up!!! go see this film and see why you shouldn't quit...

I really hope this is not the way Portuguese cinema is going, as the previous review enthusiastically claims. The film is in two parts with no relation that I could discern between each other, and both with essentially no storyline. The first part is not too bad actually, and seems to be about the distress of someone turning 30 without much to show for it. The second part is absurd, a kind of hid and seek children's game where the actors are adults impersonating children. It goes on for ages with nothing really happening at all.

The only positive aspect of the move are the two or three songs in the first part. The voices are really stunningly beautiful and almost haunting in their ambivalence between being joyful and sad, and the music is beautiful. Indeed, I have been trying to find some recording of this but could not find any. If anyone can tell me how to find them or other songs by the same singer I would really appreciate it.