Let’s go – May 2021

What is love anyway? A collective act of passion was all that was needed for this film to take place. Il y avait le démon de la possibilité (“There was the demon of possibility”). I was moved by something inside me that needed to escape. I didn’t feel like waiting to hear back about the funding (which ended up never arriving. Perhaps one day it will? Perhaps …) Never mind, the film had to be made!

The actors (Pierre Léon, Rita Durão, Olivia Cábez, Ado Arrietta) and the technical directors (Jorge Quintela/picture; Olivier Blanc/sound) all replied the same way: “On y va!” (“Let’s go!”)

So last November we headed off to the North of Portugal, to Moledo do Minho. There were twelve of us in all, taking with us a bag full of bitcoins that had been produced, as if by magic, from the pockets of our friend, the joyeaux Gonzalo Pelayo (these would pay for the basic costs of the shoot). Held firmly in the other hand, our Covid tests!

I don’t remember ever feeling this level of togetherness, love and inspiration on a film shoot. The world outside just disappeared.

The Moledo sky awaited us impatiently. The house where the film would be set was perfect. Nothing was very clear or certain, only sensed and hoped for. “Le Trio en mi bemol”, the only piece of theatre written by Rohmer, in the 1980s, was our starting point and inspiration, and we had already rehearsed a little by video before the trip.

I don’t remember ever feeling this level of togetherness, love, and inspiration on a film shoot. The world outside just disappeared. No one went out, no one came in, just as on the sacred island of Delos no one dies and no one is born. We worked very intensely, but in idyllic, happy union. It was a sentimental comedy. In these hoarse and age-worn days we live in, the time we had was brief; four initial weeks, that have now extended to today, with the film entering the final stages of editing.

There seems to be a contradiction: doors that close/doors that want to be opened. As a contradictory person myself, I feel I’m destined to produce these contradictions rather than find them.

These great contradictions of mine force me to maintain a highly ambiguous stance towards reality. Truth be told, what I think about myself—my sense of being—is connected to what I can become through my work.

Rita Azevedo Gomes

Translation: Joseph Owen