The man who wrote Portugal's Eurovision entry about lip-syncing finally has a film
Playback, directed by Sérgio Graciano, opened on 6 August in more than fifty cinemas. Newcomer Rafael Ferreira plays composer Carlos Paião across a decade running from medical school to the Festival da Canção.
Playback reached Portuguese cinemas on 6 August, opening in more than fifty screens. Directed by Sérgio Graciano and written by Mário Cenicante, it is a drama about Carlos Paião rather than a documentary, and that distinction was clearly a deliberate choice.
The film covers roughly ten years of the composer’s life. The medical degree, which he finished. His marriage to Zaida Cardoso. The Festival da Canção appearances that made him a face the whole country recognised. And the songwriting-for-others that accounts for most of what he actually produced.
The casting
Rafael Ferreira takes the lead, picked from a national casting call that drew more than two hundred candidates. Laura Dutra, Albano Jerónimo, Rita Durão, António Mortágua and Anabela Moreira fill out the cast.
Putting an unknown in the role of someone plenty of viewers still remember from television is a gamble. It is also probably the only way an audience watches the character rather than the actor.
Why the name still carries
Carlos Paião was born in Coimbra on 1 November 1957 and died on 26 August 1988 in a car crash, aged thirty. He left behind “Cinderela”, “Pó de Arroz”, “Vinho do Porto”, “Souvenir de Portugal” and “Play-back”, the wry song about miming that he took to Eurovision in 1981 and that Portuguese crowds still sing at parties where half the room was born after he died.
That is the raw material: a body of work that has outlived its author by nearly forty years. After a stretch in which Portuguese music mostly reached the screen through concert films and live recordings, a scripted biopic is a change of register. Showtimes and participating screens are listed at Cinemas NOS.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: NOS Audiovisuais
