De Oliveira belongs to a shrinking number of living filmmakers identifiable from a brief sequence, a few frames, of any film. I'm not sure who the others are, though certainly Rohmer, maybe the newer Kurosawa, and probably Kiarostami if he didn't have so many imitators, his own children among them.<br /><br />The precisely titled A Talking Picture begins as Rosa and her daughter, Maria Joana, stand at the rail of a Mediterranean liner about to depart. Just as wavers ashore, who for distance seem frozen in motion to this goodbye ritual, begin to slip away, Rosa and Joana's fellow passengers walk around them backwards to the ship's motion, trying to hold sight of their well-wishers for as long as possible. No one looks at the mother and daughter. Mother and daughter don't move. Like stones paired in a stream, they break yet don't halt the flow. Calmly, with a smile, continuing to preen Joana's long hair Rosa continues her dialog. We know the dialog hasn't just begun, because Joana's questions are so acute, because she's so clearly her mother's daughter. But in another sense, things do start right here. Mother and daughter have a past, yet the artifice does not: the film is circular. To De Oliveira's naysayers, I suggest watch at least these opening minutes immediately after the film's final frames. If you can bear it, re-watch every line and image of Rosa's long instruction knowing what will happen.<br /><br />I'm afraid it's all too fresh in mind to trust myself to offer much more beyond random thoughts. Though I read only three of the four languages (no Greek), I caught on immediately that each at the Captain's table spoke her own language. Aside from Malkovich, who mixes French and English when speaking to Deneuve, they, if I didn't miss, don't even inject common Anglicisms. The effect was so intriguing I'm grateful De Oliveira left me time to think Babel before Malkovich cued it. The symbolism in Joana's Arab doll may seem too heavy, but at the same time it encompassed the sometime tragedy of chance. Rosa's top of the head example of a doll taken away, with which she explains war to Joana, may have been what sent Joana back. Just the mention of a doll, I mean: not that Joana ran back because of anything to do with war.<br /><br />There's no such thing as an objective definition of war. Rosa's needs examination, against the rest of the film and against actuality. If hers is also De Oliveira's definition, then all the more so. But I'm not going to try to do it here. I'm not even going to try to decide whether the film or De Oliveira equate war with terrorism.<br /><br />Like every De Oliveira film, A Talking Picture is quietly musical. What I mean is even with the sound turned off, or with Papas and the instrumentals removed: the edits are musical. "Listen" to the hard beat of the ship's bow punctuating the flow. Appreciate the asymmetrical rhythm that shunts Malkovich and ladies mostly to the film's final third. Who is chorus and who verse, Rosa or Joana?<br /><br />Two silly De Oliveira anecdotes: <br /><br />A screening at my local film festival of another misunderstood De Oliveira film -- I think it may have been The Letter -- set what may be a festival record for loud running battles in the audience: "Stop kicking my seat back!" "I'm not!" "You are so!" At least four separate disputes ran on and on in different corners of the medium-sized screening room. Why that film? Why De Oliveira? I've no idea. But as I was on my way out, one of the ever-present festival matrons revealed to me that she hadn't gotten the film at all. The quietly inane dialog, from one character, though I'd known it immediately for hilarious dead-on satire, she'd attributed to the nearly ninety-year-old De Oliveira's finally losing touch. She actually used the word "senile."<br /><br />Don't know if it was the same year, but the one in which the same festival gave De Oliveira a lifetime achievement award, unlike most visiting directors he attended as many other directors' films as he could manage in his few days at the festival. Seemed like every film I attended, there he was. Once I looked round and discovered him right behind me. Instead of sitting up rigid as many people that age seem to for fear of displacing a vertebra, he slouched down like a teenager, legs sprawled into the aisle, clearly absorbed by whatever was showing.