''Diamantino'' is a 2018
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...
comedy-drama
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
film written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt. The film was produced by Justin Taurand, Maria João Mayer, and Daniel van Hoogstraten. It stars
Carloto Cotta
Carloto Cotta (born 31 January 1984) is a Portuguese actor.
Career
Born in Paris, he grew up in Lisbon, and at the age of 15 he started his acting training at the Escola Profissional de Teatro de Cascais. He made his film debut in Miguel Gomes' ...
, Cleo Tavares, Anabela Moreira, and Margarida Moreira. The film follows Premiere
association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
star Diamantino after he loses his special touch and ends his career in disgrace. Searching for a new purpose, the international icon sets on a delirious odyssey where he confronts
neo-fascism
Neo-fascism is a post-World War II far-right ideology that includes significant elements of fascism. Neo-fascism usually includes ultranationalism, racial supremacy, populism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sen ...
, the
refugee crisis
A refugee crisis can refer to difficulties and dangerous situations in the reception of large groups of Forced displacement, forcibly displaced persons. These could be either internally displaced person, internally displaced, refugees, asylum ...
,
genetic modification
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including t ...
and the hunt for the source of genius. It was screened in the
International Critics' Week
The International Critics' Week (french: Semaine de la Critique) was founded in 1962 and is organized by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics. It was created following the showing of '' The Connection'' directed by Shirley Clarke which had been ...
section at the
2018 Cannes Film Festival
The 71st annual Cannes Film Festival was held from 8 to 19 May 2018. Australian actress Cate Blanchett acted as President of the Jury. The Japanese film ''Shoplifters'', directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, won the Palme d'Or.
Asghar Farhadi's psycho ...
, where it won the Grand Prize.
Plot
Diamantino is a world-famous Portuguese soccer star whose looks and persona bear an uncanny resemblance to that of real-life soccer star
Cristiano Ronaldo
Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro (; born 5 February 1985) is a Portuguese professional footballer who plays as a forward and captains the Portugal national team. He is currently a free agent. Widely regarded as one of the greatest p ...
. Diamantino was raised by a single father and has a pair of twin older sisters who verbally abuse and manipulate him so they can take advantage of his wealth. Diamantino is rich, beautiful, and a genius on the field but lacks almost any intelligence off the field. The one thing he does have is an abundance of empathy. So much so that after he rescues a boat full of
refugees
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution. while on his yacht, he gets extremely affected by their tragedy and it causes him to miss the goal winning shot in the
FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...
championship game. At the same time, Diamantino's father dies from a stroke after being harassed by his twin daughters.
After being blamed for losing the World Cup for Portugal, Diamantino's career is over and he becomes a national joke. While wallowing in sorrow over his career and his father's death, Diamantino sees an ad for child refugees who need a family. He goes on a TV interview to express his desire to adopt a refugee. Two lesbian Secret Service agents who have been investigating Diamantino for
money laundering
Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdictions ...
, see the interview and decide to capitalize on the opportunity. One of the agents named Aisha disguises herself as a boy named Rahim and poses as Diamantino's adopted refugee. Meanwhile, his sisters volunteer their brother to the
ministry of propaganda whose plan is to clone Diamantino and create an entire soccer team of genius players. Diamantino, being a gullible and obedient little brother, doesn't suspect anything and goes to his appointments every day with genetic specialist Dr. Lamborghini thinking they are trying to get his mojo back. Diamantino's cloning treatment involves a large amount of
hormones
A hormone (from the Ancient Greek, Greek participle , "setting in motion") is a class of cell signaling, signaling molecules in multicellular organisms that are sent to distant organs by complex biological processes to regulate physiology and beh ...
and he begins to grow boobs.
Agent Aisha's undercover investigation reveals that Diamantino is innocent and it is his sisters who are stealing from him and laundering the money. During Aisha's investigation, she and Diamantino begin to get close and her lesbian partner accuses Aisha of being too emotionally invested in the case. Diamantino's sisters see security camera footage of their fight and realize who Aisha is and what she's doing. The sisters attempt to kill Aisha but are interrupted when they see Diamantino arriving home. Aisha escapes and goes to Diamantino who takes her to the safety of his yacht. On the yacht, Aisha and Diamantino have a romantic moment and she reveals to him that she is a woman. The next morning, Diamantino's sisters text him the video of Aisha and her girlfriend arguing and trick him into believing it was them who stole the money from him. Diamantino then goes to meet with his sisters who then kidnap him and bring him to the cloning facility. The last phase of the cloning is to transfer his genius to the clones, and it would kill Diamantino. However, the last phase fails because Diamantino is too dumb and doesn't have enough active brainpower to transfer. Meanwhile, Aisha breaks into the facility to rescue Diamantino but runs into the twins who try to kill her. Aisha ends up killing both the twins and tries to rescue Diamantino who realizes her feelings for him were true. Just as Aisha is about to get Diamantino to safety, she is shot by the director of the ministry of propaganda who then proceeds to try and drown her. Diamantino musters all of his strength and kills the director, saving Aisha. Diamantino realizes he got his mojo back, but decides to give up soccer, and he and Aisha live a happy life together.
Cast
*
Carloto Cotta
Carloto Cotta (born 31 January 1984) is a Portuguese actor.
Career
Born in Paris, he grew up in Lisbon, and at the age of 15 he started his acting training at the Escola Profissional de Teatro de Cascais. He made his film debut in Miguel Gomes' ...
as Diamantino Matamouros
* Cleo Tavares as Aisha Brito
* Anabela Moreira as Sonia Matamouros
* Margarida Moreira as Natasha Matamouros
* Carla Maciel as Dr. Lamborghini
* Chico Chapas as Chico Matamouros
* Hugo Santos Silva as Mouro
* Joana Barrios as Minister Ferro
* Filipe Vargas as Helena Guerra
* Maria Leite as Lucia
* Manuela Moura Guedes as Gisele
* Leandro Vieira as Goalkeeper
Production
The film was produced by Maria & Mayer production company in association with Les Films du Bèlier and Syndrome Films. The producers were Justin Taurand, Maria João Mayer, and Daniel van Hoogstraten. The film was shot in
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
,
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, and
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
through their respective production companies.
Release
In the worldwide box office, the film grossed a total of $235,041, 70.2% of which came from international box office and 29.8% from the US domestic box office.
The film was distributed in the United States by
Kino Lorber
Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company based in New York City. Founded in 1977, it was originally known as Kino International until it was acquired by and merged into Lorber HT Digital in 2009. It specializes in art house films, ...
. It was released in 1 theater on its opening and made $6,412. The film made a total of $70,088. The film was distributed in France by Ufo Distribution. It was released in 38 theaters and made a total of $88,310. The film was distributed in Italy by I Wonder PIctures. It was released in 51 theaters and made a total of $9,386. The film was distributed in Portugal by Zon Lusomundo Audiovisuais. It was released in 22 theaters and made a total of $65,087. The film was distributed in the United Kingdom by Modern Film Distributors. It was released in 3 theaters and made a total of $2,170.
Reception
On
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads, "''Diamantino'' casts a singularly surreal eye on an ambitious array of subjects, emerging with a cinematic experience as inscrutable as it is unforgettable." On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". The film won multiple awards including the Critics' Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in France.
In a review for the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', film critic
Justin Chang
Justin Choigee Chang (born January 3, 1983) is an American film critic and columnist for the ''Los Angeles Times''. He previously worked for ''Variety''.
Early life
Justin Chang graduated from the University of Southern California in 2004. Chan ...
writes, that the film, "is the funniest gender-bending, human-cloning refugee-crisis soccer comedy I've ever seen, and also the most thoughtful." He goes on to talk about the film's critical reception as well as its depiction of politics saying that, "it was widely received as a welcome blast of escapism, a departure from the worthy, solemn art cinema that proliferates at international film festivals. But its madcap delirium can't hide its insistent politics, its disdain for sham populism and its compassion for the disenfranchised. "Diamantino" is no less committed to these ideas than it is to its own uneven, unforgettable lunacy."
In a Critic's Pick article for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' written by
Glenn Kenny
Glenn Kenny (born August 8, 1959) is an American film critic and journalist. He writes for ''The New York Times'' and '' RogerEbert.com''.
Biography
Kenny attended William Paterson University, where he majored in English literature.[The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...]
'' gave Diamantino three out of five stars saying that, "The film is fun, but, for all its inventiveness, it's a bit tame, with its nice-but-dim hero. But Diamantino is never dull."
The film was also given three out of four stars by film critic Peter Sobczynski on
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
's film review website, rogerebert.com. Sobczynski writes that, "the sheer weirdness of the whole enterprise has a charm to it and it certainly is never boring. Bewildering, maybe, but never boring." He goes on to write, "The stuff involving the mad scientist and the unexpected results of her experiments on Diamantino are absurd enough but enter the proceedings in such an arbitrary manner that it fails to land the impact that it might have had with a more focused screenplay."
Awards
References
External links
*
''Diamantino''at
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb, which itself is owned by Amazon.
History
Brandon Gray began ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Diamantino
2018 films
2018 comedy-drama films
2018 LGBT-related films
2018 science fiction films
2010s fantasy comedy-drama films
2010s Portuguese-language films
2010s science fiction comedy-drama films
Brazilian association football films
Brazilian fantasy comedy-drama films
Brazilian LGBT-related films
Brazilian science fiction comedy-drama films
Films about refugees
French association football films
French fantasy comedy-drama films
French LGBT-related films
French science fiction comedy-drama films
Lesbian-related films
LGBT-related science fiction comedy-drama films
Portuguese comedy-drama films
Portuguese fantasy films
Portuguese LGBT-related films
Portuguese science fiction films
Science fantasy films
2010s French films