Film: Prénom Ernesto

Marvelous movie! Prénom Ernesto was made by Gabriel Dib and it stars Ernesto Salles as Ernesto and Debora Gaspar as Anna K.  It’s in Portuguese and I don’t understand more than several words of it but I don’t have to.  It’s a wonderful film that is inspired and heavily influenced by the work of Jean-Luc Godard.  The filming of traffic at the beginning of the film is a Godard signature, the gunshots on the soundtrack, the sudden on-screen titles and the quote from Godard that goes, ‘All you need for a movie is a girl and a gun.’  That’s essentially what this film is about.  It’s shot with that casual sense of people interacting with objects that Godard perfected in the early sixties. Dib has made a very careful and productive study of Godard’s technique and uses it in a way that shows how fresh and modern it still is.