05/02/2025 - Sandro Aguilar’s feature is a magnetic, cinematic tour de force that brilliantly moves along the labyrinthine paths of human emotion

Sandro Aguilar’s third feature, First Person Plural [+see also:
trailer
interview: Sandro Aguilar
film profile], is part of this year’s Tiger Competition at IFFR. In this film, we follow the events that unravel on the eve before a couple’s trip to a tropical luxury resort, for a celebration of their 20th wedding anniversary. Irene (Isabel Abreu), Mateus (Albano Jerónimo) and their son (Eduardo Aguilar) are the three main forces that drive us on a path that proposes itself as an internal but also external, expansive game of mimics, reflection and deception, where rules of narrative and behaviour linearity become deeply blurred – a mirror of how complex humans and life can be.

Each character is set to move on a specific direction: Mateus has to go out of town for a funeral, Irene stays home and goes to work, and unbeknownst to them their son runs away from a school excursion, wandering around in different places. As the film unfolds they all move physically away, yet seem unable to escape themselves – and each other. They encounter different characters which appear in the form of their partner – or, in the son’s case, his parents. It’s by navigating – or getting immersed in – their own tangled labyrinth (that gets ever more intricate whilst also expanded) that their traumas and desires emerge intensely: the demons they have to face and can’t seem to be able to escape.

The expression “the journey is the destination” could be rightfully applied to this theatre of the absurd, where no absolute conclusions can be drawn – a big piece of this puzzle’s magic. Delving into a strongly performative play of bodies (and also selves), a lot can be revealed from simple and sometimes bizarre gestures, from our very first glances at the characters: Mateus wearing a full-face mask, with his hands and his posture denouncing a dance of OCD lines; later, Irene laying in a shell-shaped bed, with her hands held high (as if frozen in her own movement), with her eyes covered by a sleeping mask, her mouth spilling words and her body moving at a slow pace, as in a sedative-induced melt. All the neurotic choreography throughout the film is highlighted not only by the strong performances of the cast, but also by a composed visual approach, which inevitably reveals a sense of (or attempt at) control, opposed to the hallucinatory trip the characters are experiencing. The masterful and smooth cinematography by Rui Xavier, combined with an astonishing art direction by Nádia Henriques, create a dark yet paradisiac sensation in every scene. Nevertheless, where paradise resides, hell unravels, allowing the movements of this narrative formulated by Sandro Aguilar to create an even more powerful effect - the uncontrollable and sometimes unexplainable surfaces. Contrasting feelings of visual and aesthetic delight, mixed with the discomfort of extremely raw performances, create a powerful magnetism that promises to echo in the minds and bodies of the audience.

It’s in the final setting of the tropical luxury resort (for which the couple had to take some vaccines with potential side-effects along the way) that all reflections and projections subside. In a simple touch of vulnerability, found on an emotional embrace, the characters step forward on this journey to get closer to “us”: in both first person singular and plural.

First Person Plural is an O Som e a Fúria production, made in co-production with La Sarraz Pictures, and sold by Portugal Film.