‘Greice’: Rotterdam Review

Dir/scr: Leonardo Mouramateus. Brazil/Portugal. 2023. 109mins

Little white lies do battle with inconvenient truths in Greice, a nonchalant, loose-limbed fol-de-rol in which the title character confronts life’s many challenges with half-truths, exaggerations and evasions. A mild-mannered confection gains in appeal as it unfolds, and could attract festival interest after a world premiere at Rotterdam.

A mild-mannered confection gains in appeal as it unfolds

Writer/director Leonardo Mouramateus’s first feature Antonio One Two Three (2017) was also a world premiere at Rotterdam. Now his third feature continues an interest in deception, fantasy and the way we embellish facts to create a more interesting version of our banal lives. Greice (Amandyra) is a Brazilian student on a Fine Arts course in Lisbon, majoring in sculpture. She works at a coffee stand and assists with the make-up for the videos of rising music star Clea (Isabel Zuaa). She is happy to let the world think she is a manager of both the coffee stand and Clea.

An incorrigible chancer, Greice meets Afonso (Mauro Soares) when she blags her way into his house to use his pool on a sweltering summer’s day. She claims it would be perfect for a Clea video shoot. It is the beginning of a prickly relationship that eventually leads them to a fresher’s welcome party-cum-treasure hunt in a museum where a precious painting is set alight, and suspicion falls on Greice. She flees the country to her native Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, determined to smooth everything out and legally return to Portugal. Staying in a hotel rather than informing anyone of her return adds a further complication.

The party is central to the story, with Mouramateus flashing backwards to the events leading up to it and constantly circling back to it as the story progresses. Each time we learn more details of what actually happened on the night in question. Discovering the truth sustains the narrative without ever becoming a compelling hook.

Greice has some of the characteristics of a classic screwball comedy – especially in a disruptive, impulsive heroine who seems oblivious to the chaos she causes. The production design and costumes add elements of exuberance, using an Almodovar-friendly palette of bright colour blocks for visual appeal. Yet Mouramateus doesn’t favour scewball pace or fizz. Greice is as laidback as its central character, a woman for whom deception is second nature. We discover that even her childhood diary was a pack of lies. Willowy, smiling Amandyra makes her a blithe spirit.

Mouramateus does make the most of the locations. The vast museum in Lisbon is full of winding marble staircases, paintings and colourful murals. The anonymous hotel in Fortaleza, with its expansive reception area and inviting pool, contains lots of corners for concealment and deception. Greice’s homecoming may hint at a moment of reckoning, but inevitably it becomes another opportunity for reinvention. Any lessons learned along the way seem to apply more to other characters than to her, although the need to be true to yourself is signalled throughout.

Amandyra brings a modest charm to Greice, certainly sufficient to make it credible that nobody can stay angry with her for too long. There are notable supporting  performances from Bruna Pessoa  as Greice’s feisty cousin Marcia and Dipas as helpful, easygoing hotel receptionist Enrique – both of them willing accomplices in the games that Greice plays with fact and fiction.  More enjoyable as it goes on, Greice also serves up an infectious swingueira dance number, and the resolution of what really happened at the fresher’s party should satisfying anyone who still wants to get at the truth of the matter.