“Primeira Pessoa do Plural” (First Person Plural) dissolves the boundaries of narrative cinema to explore grief and disintegration
The 54th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) featured the premiere of Primeira Pessoa do Plural (First Person Plural) in the Tiger Competition, a section dedicated to bold and innovative work from emerging international filmmakers. This year, Portugal’s entry was the latest film of Sandro Aguilar, a director known for cinema dense with poetry and melancholia, one that resists straightforward narratives and instead embraces mystery and ambiguity, often dissolving the linearity of time.
“Reality slips. Contexts shift. What is left unsaid often holds more weight than what is said out loud.”
Primeira Pessoa do Plural is no exception. From the outset, it rejects traditional narrative structure—there is no clear arc, no backstory laid out for the viewer. With its theatrical dialogue, the erratic behaviors of its characters, and a warped sense of time and space, the film disorients as much as it sparks curiosity. While the premise is relatively simple—a couple gets vaccinated in preparation for an exotic trip, and experiences side effects of the treatment—the film quickly unravels into something far less tangible. Reality slips. Contexts shift. What is left unsaid often holds more weight than what is said out loud. At the heart of it all lies a quiet grief: the couple is mourning the loss of their daughter—a truth that slips past easily if one isn’t paying close attention.
“The sadness is masked by absurdity, the grief buried beneath layers of disorientation.”
The film’s opening scene sets the tone for what follows: Mateus, the husband, wears a white medical mask completely obscuring his face, while Irene, his wife, remains hidden under a sleeping mask during their first interaction on-screen. This visual metaphor introduces a key theme—concealment. The characters hide behind facades, constructing elaborate fantasies as a means of escape. They encounter each other in different contexts and different forms, slip in and out of personas, as if perpetually auditioning for a play that never quite begins. Their relationship is fluid, evolving through surreal variations that blur the line between reality and performance. While illness and medication are recurring motifs, suggesting a possible rational explanation for the couple’s bizarre behavior, they ultimately serve as a disguise.
“Aguilar insists on absence rather than explanation, on emotional fragmentation over linearity.”
The sadness is masked by absurdity, the grief buried beneath layers of disorientation. Though the film sets a clear deadline—the couple departs for the tropics in 48 hours—the passage of time feels elusive. Enigmatic exchanges seem suspended, detached from any linear progression. The film requires heightened focus yet simultaneously encourages the viewer to surrender to its dreamlike logic.
Objects appear in one scene and mysteriously resurface in another, subtly reinforcing continuity while deepening the film’s disorienting effect. Visual compositions are meticulously controlled, a striking counterpoint to the characters’ dissolving grasp on reality. Rui Xavier’s cinematography and Nádia Henriques’ art direction work in perfect tandem to craft a world that is both dark and enticing—polished surfaces masking deep fractures. The color palette and set design reinforce this perception, evoking the film’s Portuguese saudade—a lingering melancholy.
“How much of it is real? How much is merely a desperate attempt to construct meaning where there is none?”
Unlike Aguilar’s previous films, which often relied on improvisation, Primeira Pessoa do Plural was meticulously scripted and rehearsed. As revealed in the Q&A, every sentence was carefully analyzed to achieve precise delivery. Aguilar noted that the writing and staging were developed through an intimate, participatory process—resulting in a performance style that feels at once playful and tragic. One of Portugal’s greatest contemporary actors Albano Jerónimo and Isabel Abreu, both of whom are trained in theater, deliver outstanding performances. Their physicality and command of movement bring an almost choreographed quality to their roles. The characters oscillate between exaggerated gestures and an unsettling emotional detachment, evoking a sense of tension and eerie artificiality. They engage in a strange game—childlike, absurd, yet deeply existential. How much of it is real? How much is merely a desperate attempt to construct meaning where there is none?
Primeira Pessoa do Plural is not an easy watch. It breaks from cinematic convention by insisting on absence rather than explanation, by resisting the urge to guide toward a single, coherent meaning. Centering emotional fragmentation over linearity, the film demands patience, and at times frustrates—but it is also hypnotic as it pulls the viewer into its strange dance. It lingers in one’s memory after the first screening like a half-remembered dream: unsettling, elliptical and oddly affective.
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