Rui Pedro Silva (Gaspar) in 'The Tree of Knowledge' by Eugène Green. JHR FILMS
Le Monde's review – Worth seeing
Who has never dreamed of making a group of dawdling tourists vanish from a picturesque street? The mischievous Eugène Green, born in New York in 1947 and now based in France, has thought about it more than once, having watched Lisbon transform throughout the 2010s, with its freshly painted shops and guided tours. The situation of the Portuguese capital, which is hugely dependent on tourism, has inspired filmmakers: The topic was already at the heart of a surprising, almost nightmarish documentary, Alis Ubbo (2018), by Portuguese director Paulo Abreu (discovered at the Doclisboa festival), with audio guides saturating the soundtrack.
Falling in love with the city of seven hills, Green, one of the most baroque of contemporary filmmakers, previously shot three films in Lisbon: The Portuguese Nun (2009), How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018) and the documentary Lisbon Revisited (2019). The latter had already captured the hordes of backpack-toting globetrotters streaming off trams, from the Bairro Alto neighborhood to the seaside. One of the film's title cards reads: "Cinema reveals hidden reality," while "tourism masks visible reality."
