João de Deus’s musical perversions

Abstract

This article addresses the music and its interactions in two films directed by João César Monteiro–Recordações da Casa Amarela [Recollections of the Yellow House] and A Comédia de Deus [God’s Comedy]. These are the first two films in God’s Trilogy, a trilogy released between 1989 and 1999. Together, they tell the story of a character called João de Deus, who lives and behaves in ways that deviate from social and moral norms, establishing obsessive and perverse relationships with several women. In this article, we approach the music and sounds we hear in certain scenes and the way these work in representing the character’s ‘self’. Thus, by analysing the music that accompanies the voyeuristic behaviour of the character João de Deus towards Julieta, his sexual overvaluation of Rosarinho, and the fetishism evidenced in his relationship with Joaninha’s underwear, we can both better define the main character’s personality and understand the role music plays in developing the plots of Monteiro’s cinema.