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All Is Well

By Ryan Mason · June 22, 2012

Por Aqui Tudo Bem (All is Well), Pocas Pascoal’s semi-autobiographical tale of two Angolan sisters struggling to survive in Portugal, provides a compelling concept but ultimately falls flat due to a threadbare plot and inconsistent characters.

We meet Maria and Alda, both in their late teens, just as they’ve emigrated from Angola to escape the rising violence that had already caused the disappearance of their father. They stay in a hotel waiting for their mother to arrive, but delays and lack of money force them onto the streets to fend for themselves. What follows is a tedious string of “and then” events that likely held tons of emotional resonance for Pascoal – who bases the plot and the character Maria on her own experiences – yet fail to connect with the audience on the big screen.

The main issue isn’t simply that it’s slow; rather, it’s because the characters don’t drive the story along through their own actions, instead reacting to plot-building events thrown at them by the unseen filmmaker. A strong plot will go something like this: Event X happens, therefore Character A does this. A weak one will go more like: Event X happens to Character A, and then Event Y happens. All is Well is an example of the latter. And then when the girls do make active decisions, they seem out of character.

At first, Alda seems to be the older, mother figure of the two sisters, comforting Maria when she panics frequently – she literally throws herself against the wall in emotional agony – when they first find themselves homeless. But then shortly after they find an abandoned flat in an apartment building full of fellow Angolan emigrants, Maria is the one who confidently volunteers to go meet up with these two guys they only met once (and who creeped them out at the time) in order to have them install a lock on their door. Of course, Alda then causally lets her go without a second thought. This feels completely out of character from what we’ve seen thus far from both sisters, yet is necessary to progress Pascoal’s plot, which involves a love story between Maria and Carlos. It’s as if, twenty minutes into the film, Maria and Alda swap character traits whenever it’s necessary to advance the plot. Hard to relate to people when they merely feel like cogs in a machine.

It’s too bad because it’s obvious that this is a passion project for Pascoal. But this may also be the film’s biggest flaw. Sometimes being that close to the subject material blinds you to how others might see what is so fundamentally powerful to you. Scenes like when Alda jolts awake from a nightmare might conjure up terror for Pascoal, but fall flat to the audience when we never feel the emotional support for it. Yes, it makes sense to the extent that these girls are squatting in a run-down building in a foreign country. But once we realize that this nightmare scene is just a one-off like so many others, that if you removed them from the film it wouldn’t affect the plot or the sisters’ character arcs in any shape or form, we start to wonder why we’re spending our time seeing specifically what we’re seeing rather than any other number of possible situations.

Actresses Ciomara Morais and Cheila Lima have their moments and show promise, yet find themselves hampered by the thinly developed characters they portray. The scenes that need them to convey real emotional depth – usually involving the sisters speaking on the phone to their mother – never pack the punch they should, though much of that blame falls on Pascoal and co-screenwriter Marc Pernet for not building up to those beats as well as they could’ve. Surely a missed opportunity, All is Well still attempts to tell an important tale about a part of the world not normally explored in film, especially here in America. For that alone, it’s a noble misfire, but a misfire nonetheless.