How can you leave everything behind and go take care of a garden?

Avelina Prat knows very well the meaning of new beginnings and vital changes of direction, since before entering the film industry, she trained and worked as an architect. It is logical, then, that she ended up making a film like A Portuguese villa, full of characters in existential transit. The story begins with a Serbian woman who discreetly leaves Spain to return to her country, leaving her husband, a university geography professor, with a lot of questions, which push him adrift and end up randomly assuming the identity of another person as a gardener of a fifth in a small town in Portugal.

The synopsis seems far-fetched, but the director gives each situation, gesture, and decision a serene and understanding look, without asking for too many explanations. Nor do her characters, who recognize each other as migrants and, in some cases, as ghosts occupying the place of the deceased. Questions of identity and the almost mystical notion of home become entangled in the script, which presents a specular structure and a reflective attitude that also translates to the staging. Prat avoids realistic simulation to indulge in games such as passing off streets and spaces that we clearly identify as Barcelona as Madrid. A flagrant inconsistency that A Portuguese villa assimilates naturally within its labyrinth of impersonations.