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One of the best films i have seen

just watch it!

Beautiful, moving film.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I believe this movie attempts to reset Eça de Queiroz's 1874 short story of the same name in 2009 Lisbon.The movie came off as rather awkward and unbelievable. The elements are quite ludicrous: guy falls in love at first sight, uncle (most ridiculous of all characters) rejects the relationship for no reason at all, girl goes out with him behind her family's approval (even though she had no idea who she was going out with). You never connect with any of the characters. Anyways, the story goes on, too slowly, but no less strange.

Reading the other reviews helped me to put this film in context. If you watch the film cold you will be baffled and not sure how to react. You must understand that the film is humorous and a parody.The film is based on a nineteenth century short story (Eça de Queiroz). But it is a parody on nineteenth century story telling (and life). As such it is humorous and entertaining. A clerk Macário (Ricardo Trêpa) sees a girl Luisa (Catarina Wallerstein) out of his window... he must marry her (Yes this is funny in today's world). His boss also his uncle will not allow him to be married. The clerk goes off to find his fortune to support his love. He prevails but is swindled of his fortune. However, in the end his uncle forgives him and supports the marriage. As he is about to wed he discovers his wife is a thief. That ruins it for him! (Of course Wallerstein is drop dead gorgeous so that kind of moralistic ending is so unlikely--more humor).If you don't understand this as humor (parody a stuffy idiotic Victorian story in modern times) it may appear surrealistic or too arty. The film is beautifully shot --it was too close up--this has to do with the parody too (I am assuming).Watch it and then figure it out (like I did) that will give you the most mileage.

Manoel de Oliveira writes and directs "Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl", a slight but intermittently interesting romantic comedy. De Oliveira was a hundred years old when he directed the film. Many regard him as the oldest film director in the history of our planet."Eccentricities" opens on a train bound for Algarve, a ticket inspector hobbling away from camera as the train surges forward "beneath" him. This dual motion suggests stasis, a limbo in which our hero, Marcario, sits. An attractive young man, Marcario strikes up a conversation with the passenger seated beside him. Through flashbacks we learn of Marcario's recent romantic crash-and-burn, a love affair in which he fell head over heels for the blonde haired girl living opposite his uncle's firm. Using window frames, paintings, arches and a series of immaculate compositions, Oliveira draws a line from Marcario's idealisation of the blonde girl to art and cinema. Love always springs from the visual imagination, is a polymorphous perversion more akin to a fetish, the blonde haired girl an idealised object Marcario worships from afar, but grows to detest as the distance between them closes. When the gap between fantasy and reality irrevocably crumbles, it is then comically revealed that the blonde haired girl is a creepy, deceptive thief. Marcario promptly grows furious and calls off the couple's planned marriage. But Marcario's fall into disillusionment, which Oliveira extends beyond romance to everyday life and labour, is his own fault (in a bit of meta-delusion, the film's character's applaud the text upon which they themselves are based). Though Marcario resents his uncle, he is equally pampered, narrow minded and bigoted.7.9/10 - See Bresson's "Une femme douce" instead, or Antonioni's superior, masterful "Beyond the Clouds", both better films which deal with similar material. See also "In the City of Silvia" and a Wender's misfire called "Lisbon Story". Worth one viewing.

This partly fairytale-like, partly almost surrealist movie is a little gem about gain, loss and regain, about how far one comes in being honest. It is amazing in many respects, as usually with the films of Manoel De Oliveira, and absolutely unique. E.g., the communication between Macário and Luísa takes mostly place between windows. Windows as such are compromises, openings of a wall which separate the inside from the outside, in-between-land that belongs to nowhere. Then the story obviously sets in a noble and stylistically rigid society, possibly in the 19th century, in which the novel had been written. But suddenly you see a computer screen and people paying in Euro. While Ricardo Trêpa, nephew of the director, and Leonor Silveira belong to the director's film-family, Catarina Wallenstein (who has not much to say and nothing special to act) is a true surprise, doubtlessly one of the most beautiful women ever having appeared on the silver screen, yet completely unknown hitherto outside of Portugal.