Billie August Film Themes

Fifteen years has passed before he could be able to openly face and write about his memories, which he finds all throughout Lisbon, in a continuous swing that brings the reader back and forward between past and present.
In Billie August’s movie denial is explored on two levels: in a strict sense, as we see it in the story of the Portuguese characters, and in a wider sense, as it emerges from Raimund’s past. On the one hand denial is the strategy used by the main characters to cope with the death of Amadeu which had occurred on 25 April, 1974, the day of the Revolução dos Cravos, an important day for the group of friends who were at the time young and engaged in the resistance against the regime of the Estado Novo. Even if many years have passed, we guess twenty at least, people are not willing to remember the past: João only accepts to talk to a foreigner

. . A influência da sua presença, ao longo de uma vida partilhada na mesma dimensão, não desaparece com a ida para outra dimensão.” (p.451) In the words of Luisa Raoueche, John “ in this emotional voyage through Lisbon encounters not only his mother but a reconnection with himself as individual” . While he needs the years to pass by before he can get to a closure to the loss of his mother, the characters of “Um ourives das palavras” need an outsider to come to Lisbon and mend with curiosity and a good dose of patience the fragmented memories of their past, which is connected to the time of the dictatorship and which is still too painfully close. After all, it will be the moment in which the characters face death and let the events change their lives that will change the way they are