Luca Guadagnino-Produced ‘Afonso’s Smile’ Explores a Gay Teen’s Coming of Age in Post-Revolution Portugal
Award-winning Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues (“Will-O’-the-Wisp”) is developing his next feature, the Luca Guadagnino-produced “Afonso’s Smile,” a coming-of-age story about a teenage boy who discovers his sexuality amid the upheaval of the Portuguese revolution. The director will be presenting the film during the Venice Gap-Financing Market, which runs on the Lido from Aug. 29 – 31.
“Afonso’s Smile” begins in the aftermath of Portugal’s April 1974 Revolution, as 16-year-old Afonso returns from Macau to live with his artist mother, Noémia, in Lisbon, a city still caught in the throes of post-revolutionary fervor. As the capital begins to awaken from decades of dictatorship, Afonso is stirring with his own emotional and sexual awakening.
Before long, he’s drawn into Lisbon’s clandestine gay community, where he grapples with his own identity and desires. His growing attraction to Noémia’s lover, an English journalist, blossoms into a fantasy affair through their shared passion for books, setting Afonso on a course to make increasingly risky choices as he seeks to experience love and personal freedom for the first time.
“Afonso’s Smile” is a co-production between Terratreme Filmes (Portugal), Joli Rideau (Luxembourg) and Frenesy Film (Italy), and produced by João Matos, Fabrizio Maltese and Guadagnino, whose latest film, the Julia Roberts-starring “After the Hunt,” premieres Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival. It’s based on a story by Miguel Fajardo, which was set in Colombia but adapted by Rodrigues to explore “the Portuguese reality of the revolution in the ’70s,” the director told Variety.
It begins in Macau, the Portuguese colony where Rodrigues lived as a child, and is based partly on his memories of growing up there when the revolution occurred. Unlike his previous works, however, which he described as “more essayistic mixes of documentary and fiction,” the narrative marks his first period piece and entirely follows fictional characters during that turbulent time in Portuguese history.
The setting of Macau is not incidental to the story, according to Rodrigues, describing the sleepy island as “a very small place unconnected to the rest of the world.” “The revolution arrived later there,” he said. “Everything arrived late. There was not even a ‘real’ revolution there. Everything changed politically, but nothing much changed in reality.”
“Afonso’s Smile” revolves around that “idea of delay,” said the director, mirroring the protagonist’s late awakening to his sexuality, as well as the political reality for the LGBTQ community in a country that was just emerging from nearly half a century of dictatorship.
“Homosexuality was only legalized in Portugal in ’82. The revolution was ’74,” said Rodrigues. “There was a conservative behavior. The mindset didn’t really change concerning sexuality and openness to new forms of sexuality.” When it came to Portugal’s LGBTQ community, “those rights were not conquered at the same time as freedom was conquered.”
Nevertheless, an underground queer community flourished in Lisbon, despite persecution by the authorities, and it’s in part the story of that community — told from the perspective of a teenage protagonist who’s “discovering the world” — that animates “Afonso’s Smile.”
“There are still a lot of stories that weren’t told — still not told — about that period,” said Rodrigues. “It’s not really about the [political] revolution. It’s about the revolution that’s also happening inside him as the counterpoint of the [political] revolution. They’re somehow going in different directions.”
The director noted that “metamorphosis through desire” has shaped most of his films, and in “Afonso’s Smile” he again returns to the theme of transformation, pointing to how change is “a classical way of telling a story.”
“In my films, somehow that change is more radical. It’s more physical,” he said. “You go from reality into imagination into fantasy. Perhaps that’s what I’m interested to tackle: How can you go into imagination. I think cinema, because it’s so realistic, is the ideal tool to make this shift between what is real, but at the same time doesn’t look real.”
“Afonso’s Smile” begins in the aftermath of Portugal’s April 1974 Revolution, as 16-year-old Afonso returns from Macau to live with his artist mother, Noémia, in Lisbon, a city still caught in the throes of post-revolutionary fervor. As the capital begins to awaken from decades of dictatorship, Afonso is stirring with his own emotional and sexual awakening.
Before long, he’s drawn into Lisbon’s clandestine gay community, where he grapples with his own identity and desires. His growing attraction to Noémia’s lover, an English journalist, blossoms into a fantasy affair through their shared passion for books, setting Afonso on a course to make increasingly risky choices as he seeks to experience love and personal freedom for the first time.
“Afonso’s Smile” is a co-production between Terratreme Filmes (Portugal), Joli Rideau (Luxembourg) and Frenesy Film (Italy), and produced by João Matos, Fabrizio Maltese and Guadagnino, whose latest film, the Julia Roberts-starring “After the Hunt,” premieres Out of Competition at the Venice Film Festival. It’s based on a story by Miguel Fajardo, which was set in Colombia but adapted by Rodrigues to explore “the Portuguese reality of the revolution in the ’70s,” the director told Variety.
It begins in Macau, the Portuguese colony where Rodrigues lived as a child, and is based partly on his memories of growing up there when the revolution occurred. Unlike his previous works, however, which he described as “more essayistic mixes of documentary and fiction,” the narrative marks his first period piece and entirely follows fictional characters during that turbulent time in Portuguese history.
The setting of Macau is not incidental to the story, according to Rodrigues, describing the sleepy island as “a very small place unconnected to the rest of the world.” “The revolution arrived later there,” he said. “Everything arrived late. There was not even a ‘real’ revolution there. Everything changed politically, but nothing much changed in reality.”
“Afonso’s Smile” revolves around that “idea of delay,” said the director, mirroring the protagonist’s late awakening to his sexuality, as well as the political reality for the LGBTQ community in a country that was just emerging from nearly half a century of dictatorship.
“Homosexuality was only legalized in Portugal in ’82. The revolution was ’74,” said Rodrigues. “There was a conservative behavior. The mindset didn’t really change concerning sexuality and openness to new forms of sexuality.” When it came to Portugal’s LGBTQ community, “those rights were not conquered at the same time as freedom was conquered.”
Nevertheless, an underground queer community flourished in Lisbon, despite persecution by the authorities, and it’s in part the story of that community — told from the perspective of a teenage protagonist who’s “discovering the world” — that animates “Afonso’s Smile.”
“There are still a lot of stories that weren’t told — still not told — about that period,” said Rodrigues. “It’s not really about the [political] revolution. It’s about the revolution that’s also happening inside him as the counterpoint of the [political] revolution. They’re somehow going in different directions.”
The director noted that “metamorphosis through desire” has shaped most of his films, and in “Afonso’s Smile” he again returns to the theme of transformation, pointing to how change is “a classical way of telling a story.”
“In my films, somehow that change is more radical. It’s more physical,” he said. “You go from reality into imagination into fantasy. Perhaps that’s what I’m interested to tackle: How can you go into imagination. I think cinema, because it’s so realistic, is the ideal tool to make this shift between what is real, but at the same time doesn’t look real.”