Living Bad

In a successful refresh of the episode film tradition, Living Bad offers three parts: Playing With Fire, The Pelican, and Mother Love. Each adapts one-act plays by August Strindberg, liberally reinterpreted by actors during the filming process, with clear references to the film and theatrical works of Ingmar Bergman. The episodes from the lives of hotel guests are united by time and setting (a day in a hotel in northern Portugal) and, above all, by the theme: the cruel, toxic, and inseparable bond between mother and daughter, and their (un)present lovers, husbands, and fathers. Somewhere in the background, the indistinct figures of the hotel owners loom, fragments of their conversations, calls, and cries seep through the frame—it is there that the drama of the five heroines of Bad Living, completing the 2023 diptych by João Canijo, unfolds. Both films stand as separate entities and can be treated independently, but they constantly intertwine, unexpectedly influence each other, and ruthlessly violate each other’s integrity. They remain in exactly the same relationship as mothers and daughters in the film, like the hotel owners and their guests.