A Corte do Norte – do livro ao filme

In 2008, João Botelho adapted to the screen the book A Corte do Norte/The Northern Court (1987) by Agustina Bessa-Luís, whose argument had previously been composed by José Álvaro de Morais. The story is based on the life of the famous 19th century theatre actress Emília das Neves and symbolically overlaps several generations of women between 1860 and 1960, creating implicit and explicit relationships among them, developed around a mysterious death. With the Island of Madeira as a backdrop, the landscape constitutes an important element of meaning, increasing the sense of mystery that runs through the entire film. The overlapping of several temporal planes, the correspondent identification between different female characters and the weight of the literary text gives the work a universal and dreamlike tone, despite the historical basis that sustains it. Like Bessa-Luís, Botelho is interested in portraying the social and political implications of a woman’s place in the world and capturing its dimension of mystery