The Last Time I Saw Macao

Macau, a peninsula hanging off the south coast of China, is, in the words of filmmakers João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata, “an ex Portuguese colony which never really was”. A place of uprooted national identity; colonialism bleached out by tropical mist and rain, which has now been expelled by a rampant Chinese. The directors build a melancholy collage of beautiful images, many of which worthy of a gallery wall, in this attempt to untwine both individual and national displaced histories.

Using a noir theme to string these images together, however, results in a weak non-narrative that’s unable to hold the attention with the same power as the photography. An unseen narrator pursues a former lover, significantly a transvestite, under threat from a shadowy and mystical organisation. “The dragon has spoken,” he is told, alluding to where his adversaries hail from. The stunning cinematography acts as visual metaphors to this portal linking east and west, past and present; yet the conceit of the plot’s premise is stretched over the running time, making this a collection of ideas and visual delights rather than an flowing coherent whole.