Helena is 40. She works as a film production assistant, has a daughter, an ex-husband, a lover and, at the beginning of the film, a mother. In one of the first scenes, she visits the old woman for lunch. A little later, Helena is sitting with her sister at the undertaker’s, deciding between an open or closed casket for the funeral service.

CIDADE RABAT, Susana Nobre’s latest film following NO TÁXI DO JACK (Berlinale Forum 2021), deals with grief. This emotion is articulated with restraint as the film drifts through Helena’s everyday life. Whether she is waiting at a bank counter, duping the priest at the funeral or eating a cream puff, everything is treated with a quiet, steadfast interest. The laconism is unmistakable, the humour quiet. Parties bring movement on two occasions, and piano music frames the sequence of scenes from time to time. Nobre subtly poses questions of economy: How to pay non-professional actors above the board when they don’t have a residence permit? And when Helena is doing community service, why doesn’t she realise she is supposed to do the dishes?

"Helena is assaulted by contradictory feelings; faced at once with life’s precarity and finitude, she seeks recourse a state of euphoria, eager to partake in whatever joy there is. The interaction between money and emotions is latent in this middle-class character who, about to turn 40, is going through an identity crisis. She accepts whatever comes her way and finds joy in the impersonal."

Cidade Rabat is a melancholic comedy about grief. (Sight and Sound)

An attentive and discreet observation of people cinema doesn't usually observe. (Público)

Raquel Castro is fabulous. (Diario de Noticias)