Diamantino is a 2018 science fantasy comedy-drama film written and directed by Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt. The film stars Carloto Cotta as premier football star player Diamantino, who loses his special touch and ends his career in disgrace. Searching for a new purpose, the international icon sets out on a delirious odyssey where he confronts neo-fascism, the refugee crisis, genetic modification and the hunt for the source of genius.
A co-production between Portugal, France, and Brazil, the film had its world premiere in the Critics' Week section of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prize. It was released in cinemas in France on 28 November 2018, in Brazil on 20 December 2018, and in Portugal on 4 April 2019.
Plot Diamantino is a Portuguese footballer whose appearance and persona evoke those of Cristiano Ronaldo. Raised by a widowed father, he is exploited by his twin older sister who seeks to control his fortune. Although regarded as a footballing genius, Diamantino is portrayed a naive and lacking awareness outside the sport, his most notable trait being a profound capacity for empathy.
While sailing his yacht, Diamantino rescues a boat of refugees , an experience that leaves him deeply affected by their suffering. this emotional turmoil distracts him during the final of the FIFA World Cupm causing him to miss the decisive shot. Around the same time, his father dies of a stroke following prolong harassment by his daughters.
After being blamed for losing the World Cup for Portugal, Diamantino's career is over and he becomes a national joke. While wallowing in sorrow over his career and his father's death, Diamantino sees an ad for child refugees who need a family. He goes on a TV interview to express his desire to adopt a refugee. Two lesbian Secret Service agents who have been investigating Diamantino for money laundering see the interview and decide to capitalize on the opportunity. One of the agents, named Aisha, disguises herself as a boy named Rahim and poses as Diamantino's adopted refugee. Meanwhile, his sisters volunteer their brother to the ministry of propaganda whose plan is to clone Diamantino and create an entire soccer team of genius players. Diamantino, being a gullible and obedient little brother, doesn't suspect anything and goes to his appointments every day with genetic specialist Dr. Lamborghini, thinking that they are trying to get his mojo back. Diamantino's cloning treatment involves a large amount of hormones and he begins to grow boobs.
Agent Aisha's undercover investigation reveals that Diamantino is innocent and it is his sisters who are stealing from him and laundering the money. During Aisha's investigation, she and Diamantino begin to get close and her lesbian partner accuses Aisha of being too emotionally invested in the case. Diamantino's sisters see security camera footage of their fight and realize who Aisha is and what she's doing. The sisters attempt to kill Aisha, but are interrupted when they see Diamantino arriving home. Aisha escapes and goes to Diamantino, who takes her to the safety of his yacht. On the yacht, Aisha and Diamantino have a romantic moment and she reveals to him that she is a woman. The next morning, Diamantino's sisters text him the video of Aisha and her girlfriend arguing and trick him into believing it was them who stole the money from him. Diamantino then goes to meet with his sisters who then kidnap him and bring him to the cloning facility. The last phase of the cloning is to transfer his genius to the clones, and it would kill Diamantino. However, the last phase fails because Diamantino is too dumb and doesn't have enough active brainpower to transfer. Meanwhile, Aisha breaks into the facility to rescue Diamantino, but runs into the twins, who try to kill her. Aisha ends up killing both the twins and tries to rescue Diamantino, who realizes that her feelings for him were real. Just as Aisha is about to get Diamantino to safety, she is shot by the director of the ministry of propaganda, who then proceeds to try and drown her. Diamantino musters all of his strength and kills the director, saving Aisha. Diamantino realizes that he got his mojo back, but decides to give up soccer, and he and Aisha live a happy life together.
Cast
Production Diamantino is a co-production of Portugal's Maria & Mayer, France's Les Films du Bélier, and Brazil's Syndrome Films. The film was shot on Kodak 16 mm film for five weeks in Portugal, with locations including Lisbon, the Palace of Correio-Mor in Loures, the Algarve, and Smiling Studios in Lisbon.
Release Diamantino had its world premiere in the Critics' Week section of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. The film was released theatrically in France on 28 November 2018 by UFO Distribution, in Brazil on 20 December 2018 by Vitrine Filmes, and in Portugal on 4 April 2019 by NOS Audiovisuais. In the United States, it was released on 24 May 2019 by Kino Lorber.
Reception Box office Diamantino grossed $242,892 worldwide, including $88,310 in France, $70,088 in the United States, $65,087 in Portugal, $10,021 in the United Kingdom, and $9,386 in Italy.
Critical response On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critics consensus reads: "Diamantino casts a singularly surreal eye on an ambitious array of subjects, emerging with a cinematic experience as inscrutable as it is unforgettable." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Justin Chang described the film as "the funniest gender-bending, human-cloning refugee-crisis soccer comedy I've ever seen, and also the most thoughtful." He added that the film's "madcap delirium can't hide its insistent politics, its disdain for sham populism and its compassion for the disenfranchised. Diamantino is no less committed to these ideas than it is to its own uneven, unforgettable lunacy."
Glenn Kenny of The New York Times named Diamantino a "Critic's Pick", writing that the film "feels like an early Adam Sandler comedy remixed by Pier Paolo Pasolini." Josh Cabrita of Cinemascope praised Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt's directing abilities, saying: "Abrantes and Schmidt broach issues such as the refugee crisis, neo-fascism, and surveillance technology with a camp concoction that effortlessly flattens this tapestry of topicalities."
Cath Clarke of The Guardian gave Diamantino three out of five stars, saying: "The film is fun, but, for all its inventiveness, it's a bit tame, with its nice-but-dim hero. But Diamantino is never dull." Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com gave the film three out of four stars, writing that "the sheer weirdness of the whole enterprise has a charm to it and it certainly is never boring. Bewildering, maybe, but never boring." Sobczynski went on to write: "The stuff involving the mad scientist and the unexpected results of her experiments on Diamantino are absurd enough but enter the proceedings in such an arbitrary manner that it fails to land the impact that it might have had with a more focused screenplay." Allan Hunter of Screen Daily concluded, "The film has a certain visual allure in its gaudy colours and low-budget special-effects. Yet you also long for them to put all those energies into a more focused, far funnier project."
Accolades Award Year Category Recipient(s) Result Cannes Film Festival 2018 Critics' Week Grand Prize Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt Palm Dog Award – Jury Prize Queer Palm Chéries-Chéris 2018 Grand Prize Chéries-Chéris CPH PIX 2018 Politiken's Audience Award European Film Awards 2018 Best Comedy Miami Film Festival 2019 Jordan Ressler First Feature Award Munich Film Festival 2018 Best Film by an Emerging Director Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival 2018 Best Feature Film Palm Springs International Film Festival 2019 Cine Latino Award Philadelphia Film Festival 2018 Special Jury Award – Narrative Feature Jury Award – Best Narrative Feature Portland International Film Festival 2019 Jury Prize – Best of Ways of Seeing Sarasota Film Festival 2018 Best Film Stockholm Film Festival 2018 Bronze Horse – Best Film Strasbourg European Fantastic Film Festival 2018 Best International Feature Film
See also List of association football films
References
External links