O Salto

This film deals with a pre-E.U. Europe where national borders are strictly patrolled and countries restrictive in their hiring. The protagonist, Antonio, a young Portuguese who is faced with compulsory military service - and, thus, participation in Portugal's colonial wars in Africa - chooses to travel to France to find work without papers because Portugal will not grant him the necessary passport. Another Portuguese has offered him opportunities there, and he knows a Frenchwoman, Dominique, a nurse who vacationed in Portugal. All disappoints, however, when his countryman offers him only exploitative labour on a building site and Dominique can only give him casual friendship. The film is realistic, depicting the lives and activities of the Portuguese in Paris in the 1960s, often doing work that Frenchmen and Frenchwomen disdain. The acting is naturalistic, and the film itself a good example of social realism. I should be better know, if only as a realistic time capsule.