Maria Rueff

The night of August 24, 1572, is known as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. In France a religious war is raging. In order to impose peace a forced wedding is arranged between Margot de Valois, sister of the immature Catholic King Charles IX, and the Hugenot King Henri of Navarre. Catherine of Medici maintains her behind-the-scenes power by ordering assaults, poisonings, and instigations to incest.

Every night, in danger of being beheaded, Scheherazade tells King Shahryar unfinished tales to continue them the following night, hence defying his promise of murdering his new wives after their wedding night. Scheherazade tells king Shahryar her stories but these are not those in the book. These are stories based on whatever will be happening in Portugal during the production time of the film. As in the book, these stories will be tragic and comical, with rich and poor, powerless and powerful people, filled with surprising and extraordinary events. This film will be about the reality of a disgraced country, Portugal, under the effects of a global economic crisis.

"Filme da Treta" is inspired in a previous work called "Conversa da Treta", which can be translated as "Blather" or "Foolish Talk". In fact it all begun with a radio show (with that name) where two friends, "Toni" and "Zezé", talk about their lives and their neighbourhood (located somewhere in a typical district of Lisbon!). Because of the colloquial and comic language it used to be funny. Then it passed to the stage (kind of a dialog play) and later to a TV-show. As you can see it was a success here in Portugal and the audiences applauded it… Now, the film! "Filme da Treta" is, then, just an adaptation to the movies of this succeeded show, but it was, at least in my point of view, a regression! To be honest it was a disappointment, as I expected a lot more from it. I used to appreciate "Conversa da Treta", but now with the movie it lost all the fun!