Heavy romantic drama 'Porto' more heavy-handed than insightful

Review: Heavy romantic drama ‘Porto’ more heavy-handed than insightful

By Robert Abele

Nov. 22, 2017 8 AM PT

A night in coastal Portugal sees an itinerant American laborer (Anton Yelchin, in one of his last roles) and a restless French archaeology grad student (Lucie Lucas) meet for talk, sex and emotional fragmentation in Gabe Klinger’s “Porto.”

But unlike a more conventionally approached rom-com or swoony romance about the night that changed everything, this serious-as-a-heart-attack two-hander mixes up time frames and film formats (8mm, 16mm, 35mm) to suggest an experience being remembered and played out at the same time by its participants.

Yelchin’s Jake and Lucas’s Mati first lock eyes at a dig, then at a train station and finally at a restaurant, where the first overture is made. But his vibe is uncomfortably creepy, hers inexplicably accommodating, and there seems to be a concerted effort on Klinger’s part to leave unexplored Jake’s violent stalker tendencies (briefly depicted in the flash-forwards) so as to more rapturously memorialize the eroticism of strangers coupling. The film is less a tale of equals, with Yelchin’s possessive mien fairly dominating Lucas’ looser, in-the-moment portrayal.

That’s not to say that cinematographer Wyatt Garfield’s way with grainy, intimate celluloid in an ancient city isn’t entrancingly atmospheric — the best thing about Klinger’s time/memory/dream aesthetic is how it looks: the visual equivalent of an audiophile’s nostalgia for vinyl. But the time jumping feels precious, and the screenplay — written by Klinger and Larry Gross — falls too easily into clichés about rough men and troubled women to ever achieve something truly resonant about the highs and fallouts of chance encounters.

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