Lisbon is no longer the “white city” filmed by Alan Tanner. The Portuguese capital changed a lot in the last 20 years: growed, modernized itself and turned a cosmopolitan urb not very different from other cities in Europe. And in what concerns the color of the local sunlight, there’s other tonalities usually ignored by cinema. Lisbon during the Winter isn’t certainly white. “Alice”, the debut film by director Marco Martins, is a Winter film. And the music jazz pianist Bernardo Sassetti composed and performed for it is Winter music. During the coldest monthes Lisbon people seem to close in themselves and the most crowded streets become solitary. In today’s Lisbon one can lost himself, and that’s the story told by this movie. A 3 years old girl disappears and since then her father does everything to find her, like distributing flyers with photos of his child to indifferent lisbonners and positioning video cameras in the main streets. Every night he watches the recorded images, hoping to see Alice. He questions the city as if questioning death. And as if questioning the souls of the passers. One of the thousands walking on the city veins may be the kidnapper. “Alice” is a tremenduously sad film, but in a not to obvious way. The obsession lived by the father is on the edge of madness, a quiet madness made of ambivalent feelings, desperate but strangely serene. It’s the condition to imagine something else of different, a transformative alucination. His look is a factor of change, but it can’t penetrate the walls and the faces. When he sees the videos he wants to see what is not there. Another Lisbon, a city where Alice is still present, laughing and playing, but that vision turns sterile. The changed city stopped in time, freezed. It gives nothing in return.

Sassetti’s music is also obsessive. A very simple, almost infantile, melodic line played on piano is repeated with very little variations. When it goes somewhere, the theme soon reappears. A clarinet (Rui Rosa) symbolizes Alice’s voice and down under a double bass (Yuri Daniel) represents the city as an omnipresent menace. We hear car traffic, voices, urban noises, rain, the father’s respiration. This is cinematic music indeed, with its own inner images, but conceived as a dream, a bittersweet nightmare. Few times before a soundtrack was so successful in translating such a sense of loss and emptyness. “Alice” is the definitive confirmation of Bernardo Sassetti as a soundtrack composer. With him, jazz is not the music inevitably chosen for cop’s stories and night or bar scenes. It’s the urban music per excelence, giving us the feeling of a big metropolis.

Listen to Bernardo Sassetti-Alice OST

Music recorded and mixed by Pedro Rego, at Xangrilá studios, Lisbon, in September 2004 | Remixing and mastering by Pedro Rego, at Estúdio Toka in November 2005 | Sounds (indoor and outdoor) produced and mixed by Branko Neskov and Elsa Ferreira, remixed and edited by João Rola | Original sounds for the film recorded by Pedro Melo | All other sounds were recorded inside the piano using the suspension pedal

Executive production by Clap Filmes | Executive production of Trem Azul.

Photographs by Carlos Lopes and Zé Maria Branco | Design by Rui Garrido | Original framing by André Lacerda