Porto

I have really been on the fence over whether or not I should write a review for Porto.  I had screened it earlier this month at the Parkway theater in Baltimore, MD.  This is Gabe Klinger's 2017 film about the emotional aftermath of a powerful one night stand, set in Porto, Portugal.

Porto, a film in three parts focuses on the one night stand between Jake, a jack of all trades, master of none type of person, and Mati, a budding grad student studying in Porto, the city where Jake just happens to be living and working at the time being.  Jake is the relateable character for me, as he has no real set directions in life, or any real semblance of what direction he wants to take work wise.  He works merely for the sake of needing to live.  He's a groundskeeper of sorts at an archeology site, where one of Mati's classes visits one afternoon by chance.  They eye each other, but nothing amounts. They then see each other at the same train station, and then happen to meet in the same cafe.

The movie itself seems to struggle in the budding and fizzle of this relationship.  Mati, a woman of the world, the only thing the two seem to have in common is that at that sheer moment, that the couple didn't want to be tied to anyone, anything, or any one particular place.  While I struggled throughout the film to even pinpoint why Mati would even give this stiff floating log the time of day.  While it's understandable that it seems to be a cliched approach that all beautiful women at one point go slumming, or choose to be someone, even if albeit briefly, that is the complete opposite of what they are.  Despite this, while there are so many sparse scenes while Klinger is desperately trying to achieve the "artsy" ilk, there are scenes that just make it so hard to believe that these people would ever even consider being together.  Mati chooses to continue to speak to him despite an awkward tussle in the street, leading to Jake slapping her.  Why would she then willingly meet up with him, when Jake tries to snake his way back into her life years later.  Then there's the whole Jake being the third wheel when Mati's actual boyfriend shows up a few days after their one night stand and he creepily stalks her and hangs out in her apartment.

There are just so many oddities about this relationship and Klinger tries too hard to have a cliched story where he's also trying to be artistic.  He wants to take on the classic 1920's-1930's European classics, such as Fellini and put a new updated spin while also using the classic film techniques but really falls short.  Klinger bites off far more than he can chew and really not achieve in the 76 minute film.


I give Klinger credit for wanting and utilizing a variety of different types of film.  In this day in age, it's easier and often cheaper to go in the way of digital, but it's refreshing to still have some artists take on the film concept.  The film is shot in three different sections, and is shot in 35 mm, 16 mm and Super 8 mm.  The different types of film was what I felt the only redeeming quality of the film.  The first section is from Jake's point of view.  The second is from Mati's point of view, and then the third section of the triptych approach is how the night in question actually occurs from the outsider view.  While the triptych approach is interesting and ambitious, it's a skill set that a novice film maker should not necessarily tackle unless they have a very good editing team, which Klinger did not.    In addition, in each sections, you have various random scenes in each sections of the Jake and Mati's life.

The screening I had gone to, had a q&a session with Klinger and most viewers esstially ripped the movie to shreds, as there was no real semblence of why these two would ever get together.  It would have been more interesting if we had the final section of the movie, and no dialogue after that, more just music and montages of the night and life after, and the approach would have been far more effective.