Recollections of the Yellow House (Recordações da Casa Amarela). 1989. Portugal. Written and directed by João César Monteiro. With Monteiro, Manuela de Freitas, Teresa Calado, Luis Miguel Cintra. 4K digital restoration by Cinemateca Portuguesa; courtesy The Cinema Guild. In Portuguese, with English subtitles. 122 min.
Considered by many to be João César Monteiro’s masterpiece, and often described as a visual poem, Recollections of the Yellow House is the most celebrated appearance of the director’s alter-ego: João de Deus, an aged, Nosferatu-like drifter who spends his days between an old boarding house and Lisbon’s historic, decadent neighborhoods. João de Deus is both humorous and doomed, thanks to his marginal, outcast status, an attraction to sensual purity—either in music or younger women, and an unexpected dementia diagnosis.