By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Luís Galvão Teles
Starring: Isabel Abreu | João Tempera | Marco Delgado | Maria Adánez
Country: portugal
Year: 2008
Running time: 103
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0793413/
Bruce says: “Bearing a vague similarity to the 1959 Doris Day film IT HAPPENED TO JANE, DOT.COM is a David and Goliath
tale about a town that takes on both a government and a huge multinational corporation when the townspeople feel they have been wronged. Pedro (João Tempera) is an engineer who has spent many months in the gorgeous but remote lakeside village of Aguas Altas attempting to build a road to make the town more accessible. One of his many tasks is creating a website to publicize the town’s efforts in order to get the requisite funding for the road. Concurrently, Elena an account executive for a multinational corporation in Madrid, is in process of introducing a new brand of bottled water with the same name. Many years back CORIMAM had the name Aguas Altas trademarked.
“DOT.COM is dense with plot. Pedro is staying with Victor a local forest ranger who has fallen in love with Concha, a Spanish girl he plans to marry. Ana, a TV news reporter, is Pedro’s main squeeze back in Lisbon but she is not answering his calls as of late. Elena sets off for Aguas Altas to convince the town to shut down the website. As she approaches the village she and Victor have a near automobile collision and her car is severely damaged as it careens out of control. Victor takes her back to his house where the three begin to co-habitate, a topic of much interest among the villagers. What ensues is a farce involving mistaken identity and a comical battle between those for and those against closing down the town’s website. The heated battle pits lifelong friends against one another; boyfriend against girlfriend; and husband against wife.
“The acting is facile although the characters are decidedly stereotyped. As a first for me, I felt that the two male leads should have played each other’s roles. Marco Delgado has a magical screen presence which lends itself more to a romantic lead than the nerdy ne’er-do-well-in-the romance-department guy that he is supposed to be. Conversely, João Tempera is not totally convincing as the starry-eyed engineer. The village (Dornes) is also a star…from the bell ringer in the church steeple to the man herding his flock of sheep on the main street and the Pietà floating across the lake. 3.5 cats
“DOT.COM screened as part of the 2008 Provincetown Film Festival. This year’s festival spotlight is on Portugal.”