(...) one of cinema’s most moving, lyrical hymns to romantic love, but one which – unlike, say, Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) or Hathaway’s Peter Ibbetson (1935) – is firmly grounded in a realistic view of a couple who, at least initially, are not particularly idealised or archetypal.

It is only when they split up – she becoming lost in a sinister urban environment, he within his own despair – that their spiritual and sexual feelings for each other take flight, most notably in two famous moments. In the first the skipper and his wife, although in separate beds many miles apart, caress themselves in unison. In the second, the poetic highpoint of Vigo’s cinema, the skipper has been told that one can see the woman that one loves underwater. He dives into the river (in underwater images inspired by the filming of Taris) and has a vision of Juliette floating happily in her wedding dress.

daqui

acho que o meu coração saltou uma batida ao rever estas duas cenas.