It’s a chronicle of summer holidays during which nothing goes as planned. Nine-year-old Salomé spends the summer in her beloved grandmother’s village in the mountains of northeastern Portugal. When she dies suddenly by her side, Salomé remains haunted by the spirit of the deceased, whom the inhabitants of the village consider to be a witch. At the same time, his family is torn around the remains of the deceased.
For her first feature, in competition last year at Critics’ Week, Franco-Portuguese director Cristèle Alves Meira drew on her family memories. “I was in my twenties when my grandmother died and my aunts and uncles were torn over her remains over who was going to pay for her headstone. She thus remained unburied for two years, ”explains to Point Cristèle Alves Meira. Alma Viva is centered around the gaze of the child. Sometimes angry, intriguing or sleepwalking, the young actress Lua Michel, daughter of the director, carries with talent this feature film which could very well be called “A funeral and a thousand annoyances”. In the heights of northern Portugal, there is also a funny fable close to the world of storytelling, carried by very good photography.
Beyond the family dissensions, the film mainly deals with the influence of witchcraft in Portugal. The filmmaker worked with French and Portuguese anthropologists specializing in witchcraft and collected testimonies around the subject. “We are witnessing today, and that’s good, a revival of the figure of the witch. It was important for me to come back to the archetypal figure. I like to think that to be a witch today is to represent a kind of counter-culture in the face of a very arrogant power in place who thinks they have mastered nature. It is almost an act of opposition to a very standardized and very rational society, ”continues Cristèle Alves Meira.
Throughout the images of Alma Viva, witchcraft is no longer a belief but a reality that upsets the daily lives of the characters. She is not treated in a caricatural way as she can be in horror films. This is what makes the strength of the film and makes it funny and moving.
Alma Viva, de Cristèle Alves Meira, en salle.
