A Portuguese Zoomer Looking for Love

Films about 20-something characters drifting aimlessly through life have a tendency to drift themselves, but that can also be part of their charm. Not every movie needs to be a nail-biter, and not every plot needs to be engineered like a Maserati. Some of the best examples of the genre — Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Frances Ha, Fellini’s I Vitelloni — convey that feeling of endless drifting while remaining altogether captivating. In a sense, the drift becomes the crux of the story.

Nicolau (Francisco Melo), the shy and shaggy protagonist at the heart of Joao Rosas’ debut feature, The Luminous Life (A Vida Luminosa), feels like the quintessential drifter of our time — or at least as such a time exists in a contemporary western European capital. Lovesick and forever looking for gainful employment, he wanders around Lisbon in search of something he can’t quite name or put his hands on. Maybe it’s hope? Or a viable career? Or a new girlfriend? Whatever it is, he doesn’t seem very motivated to find it, yet his meandering quest manages to intrigue all the same.

Both breezy and melancholic, the film reveals hints of Eric Rohmer with its series of random romantic encounters in the big city — including one in which Nicolau crosses paths with a French girl, Chloé (Cécile Matignon), who becomes a love interest. But it also bears the forlorn aimlessness of Robert Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer, going so far as to cite Bresson’s writings during a sequence set at the Cinemateca Portugesa. Although French cinema may be the inspiration behind much of The Luminous Life, the film feels Portuguese through and through, blending a dreamy sadness with moments of surreal comedy and sensuality, not unlike the work of late auteur Joao Cesar Monteiro.

Still living with his parents when the movie starts, and still attached to a girl he broke up with a year ago, Nicolau doesn’t seem to have any real goals except, perhaps, getting out of his rut. “You’re letting life pass you by,” someone warns him, to which he replies: “I just can’t see myself doing anything.” He manages to get a two-week temp job counting bike riders in Lisbon, lands an interview at a fancy advertising firm, and finally winds up working at a stationary store, where he’s obliged to dress as Santa Claus in the middle of spring. In his spare time, he plays bass in a band that never seems to get along, putting a damper on a music career that he hasn’t taken too seriously, anyway.

It’s not much to build a film on, but Rosas sustains our interest through the sincerity of the encounters we witness, most of which involve Nicolau hanging out with women his age — women who, for the most part, are a lot more focused and career-oriented than he is. They’re attracted by his good looks and laid-back charms, but also aware of the fact he isn’t going anywhere. At some point we start wondering whether Nicolau’s ex felt the same way, moving on in life while her boyfriend was still figuring out what to do with his. To complicate matters, we also learn that Nicolau’s hardworking dad is being cheated on, making his son question the value of a sustainable job if it ultimately ruins your marriage.

The director and cinematographer Paulo Menezes capture these queries in colorful vignettes set against an urban backdrop that never feels touristy. We see the city as it exists for regular people — and hear it through sound design that amplifies the quotidian movement of cars, buses, trams and bicycles. When there is music, it comes from Nicolau’s band as they rehearse numbers that channel the mood of the lead character and the movie itself: relaxed, thoughtful, a bit pop and a bit aloof.

The plot thickens in the closing reels when Nicolau drifts closer to Chloé, who’s in town writing a thesis on cemeteries entitled “The Architecture of Death” — a subject that seems diametrically opposed to her free-spirited, sensual demeanor. Is it possible Nicolau has finally found the love he’s been searching for? The answer could be yes, but Rosas also suggests that he may be repeating the same mistakes from before. If there’s perhaps any moral to this wistful journey toward nowhere, it’s that the only luminous life worth living is the one you’ve built for yourself, once you figure out what that is.