Mal Viver (Bad Living)

How to sum up acclaimed Portuguese director João Canijo’s latest achievement in a single word? Slow. But using two words is far more accurate: wonderfully slow. Watching Mal Viver is a specific sort of challenge, and the reluctant pace of events won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s almost as though the film doesn’t want to reach its own (slightly lazy, though still potent) conclusion.

Piedade (Anabela Moreira) is a middle-aged woman living in a boutique hotel run by her mother, Sara (Rita Blanco). The fragile nature of their guarded existence becomes obvious with the arrival of Piedade’s daughter, Salome (Madalena Almeida), whose presence disrupts the gloomy order of the establishment. Piedade is barely holding on, her only link to happiness being her overindulged lapdog. These women may love each other, but they don’t like each other.

There’s a great deal of staring in Mal Viver. The camera stares at its central subjects through open and closed windows, occasionally mixing things up by observing them through a doorway. The three generations of women aren’t always doing anything seemingly worth observing, performing a great deal of glum staring themselves – at TV screens, at each other and off into the distance. 

Audience members expecting to have the emotional intention of the screenplay sliced into digestible chunks and fed to them will be disappointed. In fact, aside from a few outbursts, demonstrable emotions are largely absent. It’s like the cast members were lightly sedated before cameras started rolling each day. The dialogue is (for the most part) almost arbitrary, although not lacking purpose.

Watching the low-energy encounters as these slow, stilted, dimly-lit lives are lived, it’s almost remarkable that the picture isn’t unbearably cold. It’s kind of mystifying when something that could have been quite laborious all holds together so well, but it does – provided the viewer is willing to invest their attention. 

Oliver Johnston

Mal Viver (Bad Living) does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Berlin Film Festival 2023 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Berlin Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for Mal Viver (Bad Living) here: