Mistérios de Lisboa

In 19th-century Lisbon, a teenage boy raised by priests learns the secret of his aristocratic lineage; a French heiress seeks revenge against the man who sullied her honor; and a kindly padre changes identities as it suits the occasion. These are among the characters who populate Raúl Ruiz’s breathtaking adaptation of one of the masterworks of Portuguese literature: Camilo Castelo Branco’s “Mistérios de Lisboa”. Nothing – and nobody – is first as it/he appears in this intoxicating spiral of stories within stories within stories, filmed by Ruiz with gorgeous period design, a fluid, pirouetting camera, and a peerless French and Portuguese cast. A companion film to his magnificent Proust adaptation, Le Temps retrouvé, Mistérios de Lisboa is the crowning achievement of a great director’s career.