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Synopsis: On September
27, 1810, the French troops commanded by Marshal Massena, were defeated in
the Serra do Buçaco by the Anglo-Portuguese army of general Wellington.
Despite the victory, Portuguese and British are forced to retreat from the
enemy, numerically superior, in order to attract them to Torres Vedras,
where Wellington had built fortified lines hardly surmountable.
Simultaneously, the Anglo-Portuguese command organizes the evacuation of the
entire territory between the battlefield and the lines of Torres Vedras, a
gigantic burned land operation, which prevents the French from collecting
supplies.
This is the setting for the adventures of a multitude of characters from all
social backgrounds - soldiers and civilians, men, women and children, young
and old - to the daily routine torn by war and dragged through hills and
valleys, between ruined villages, charred forests and devastated crops.
Highly persecuted by the French, already tormented by an unmerciful weather,
the mass of fugitives continues to move forward clenching the teeth, just to
save their skin, loaded with tenacious will to resist the invaders and
retreat them from their country. Or even hoping to take advantage of the
disarray to satisfy their basic instincts.
All of them, whatever nature or motivations - the idealistic young
lieutenant Pedro de Alencar, Clarissa Warren, the malicious little english
girl, the shady dealer Penabranca, the vindictive Sergeant Francisco Xavier
or the lusty prostitute Martírio -, all gather by different paths to the
lines of Torres, where the final battle will decide the fate of each one of
them.

Slant Magazine review:
Dull but never dreary, Lines of Wellington was one of the projects in Raúl
Ruiz's pipeline before he passed away last year. The director is his widow,
Valeria Sarmiento, a respected, if not internationally known, filmmaker in
her own right. You can't help but compare this to A.I. Artificial
Intelligence, which began life in Stanley Kubrick's hands, but was made stem
to stern by another director following his death. But while A.I. is now
regarded as one of the key films of its era, the serendipitous overlap of
two distinctive yet dissimilar visionaries, Lines of Wellington was born
under no such lucky sign. As with Spielberg's film, the influence of the
deceased artist is unmistakable, but his handiwork is absent. It looks like
we're in Ruiz territory, with its leaf-on-the-wind approach to collating
multiple storylines, and there's at least the insinuation that each thread
is rife with Ruizian coincidence, but Sarmiento's direction is no more
distinguished than if this was a Game of Thrones episode. Less Spielberg,
more Bruce Beresford.
The story—saga format, spanning an untold number of months or years—concerns
a major passage in the Peninsular War between France, Spain, and Portugal,
wherein the English Duke of Wellington ordered a series of massive
barricades to defend Lisbon from seizure by the French invaders. The Duke,
played by John Malkovich, appears in a few scenes only, mostly to express
petulant dissatisfaction at the painter he's commissioned for his portrait.
The majority of the story concerns the soldiers in the field, the women who
are affected (and sometimes damaged irreparably) by the ongoing strife, and
a massive wave of refugees, routed by the French army. Little stories,
large, of course, in the eyes of their protagonists and witnesses, dot the
landscape. Common ground with the largely peacetime Mysteries of Lisbon
includes a key player whose perceptions are colored by a traumatic head
injury, and the way its long, long lines of narrative and sub-narrative are
delineated in anecdotal parcels.
It's an odd experience, a Ruiz film (if it deserves to be called that)
devoid of dreamy mystery, reduced to a mere handsome historical epic, albeit
capably mounted by Portuguese producer extraordinaire Paulo Branco. Every
component of Lines of Wellington appears to have been ordered from a
wholesale catalog dealing in epic movies. Frames are composed according to
the manual, and there's just the right musical accompaniment for scenes of
tragedy or bawdy comedy, as well as a predictable array of guest stars.
Granted, such things can be pleasurable on their own: The cast is top-heavy
with lovely ladies (Soraia Chaves, Victória Guerra, Jemima West), and the
widescreen photography is often soothing in its tendency toward handsome
backlighting and languid tracking shots. This all could have gone very, very
wrong, but Lines of Wellington's eye-filling cinematography and production
values are enough to waft the viewer across 151 relatively pain-free
minutes. Also contributing to the film's soothing balm is Carlos Saboga's
script. Saboga adapted Mysteries of Lisbon for Ruiz, and it seems he has a
knack for keeping the thing moving at a reasonable clip, without making it
seem like it's in an all-fired hurry.
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Cast:

Credits:
Directed
by..........................Valeria Sarmiento
Written by.................................Carlos Saboga
Produced by................................Alfama Films
Music by.......................... ......Jorge Arriagada
Cinematography by..........Andrew Szankowski
Premiere dates:
Canada - September 2012
(Toronto International Film Festival)
USA- September 2012 (New York Film Festival)
Italy 4 - September 2012 (Venice Film Festival)
Portugal - October 4, 2012
France - November 21, 2012
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Movie Stills
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