A Comédia de Deus (God's Comedy). 1995. Portugal. Directed by João César Monteiro. Screenplay by Monteiro, with poetry by Luís Vaz de Camões. With Monteiro, Cláudia Teixeira, Manuela de Freitas, Raquel Ascensão. 4K digital restoration by Cinemateca Portuguesa. In Portuguese; English subtitles. 165 min.
This subversively poetic, scandalously perverse sexual comedy earned João César Monteiro a Silver Lion at the 1995 Venice Film Festival. The unofficial sequel to Recollections of the Yellow House brings João de Deus (Monteiro) back as the assistant manager of a Lisbon ice cream shop owned by an ex-prostitute (a sublime Manuela de Freitas), where the young employees awaken his depraved impulses. God’s Comedy is staggering in its celestial use of natural light and exquisite dialog, and disturbing for the repulsive behavior of a character who sees heaven and hell in all living things and refuses to obey a corrupt social contract and its clerical bodies, yet ultimately epitomizes its sins. Through João de Deus’s combination of sacred (he is enraptured by Camões, Wagner, and Haydn) and the profane (he keeps a personal bible of pubic hair, and Queen Victoria’s is its most prized entry), Monteiro exposes the amoral perversity of being alive in a nefarious, cruel world.