Cannes 2025 | I Only Rest In The Storm Review: Pedro Pinho바카라�s Three-Hour Plus Saga Is A Bristling Journey Into Uneasy Intimacy

In Pedro Pinho바카라�s I Only Rest In The Storm, colonial anxieties are stoked, cast in the crucible of ever-raging debates around identity, power and intricate, iron-grid social hierarchies. None of these can be unmoored from the other. Denial, oblivion, the film indicates, may go on as long as the new colonial power deems fit. They can remove themselves from any situation as perfectly and easily as they swoop into culturally alien contexts. There are no tough consequences바카라�a flash of epiphany that completely reorients their axis of awareness.

Hired as an environmental engineer, Sérgio (Sérgio Coragem) arrives in Guinea-Bissau. A Portuguese, he바카라�s appointed to prepare a report on a road-building project in the West African metropolis. It바카라�s crucial to delineate identity-specifics since they factor into the very heart of the film. What바카라�s the ecological cost of the project? It바카라�s a land rich in biosphere reserves. Would the road be of service to the locals or sever their link to tradition rooted in the land? As Sérgio wanders, he strikes a friendship with best-chums duo, the spunky, determined Diara (Cléo Diára) and Guilherme (Jonathan Guilherme). Nevertheless it never rises above a tenuous bond with sudden sparks.

Sérgio바카라�s colleagues who바카라�ve been working on the project for a longer time are cynical. For the Africans, it바카라�s a 바카라�tough negotiation바카라� in innovation and evolution. Rather, they are faithful to what they already know, clinging to the past. The expansive, probing screenplay gradually cracks through Western notions. Tailing Sérgio, the film scans a community grappling with access, a politics that forever pushes it to the margins.

Pinho orchestrates a bulky, ferociously intelligent epic. It isn바카라�t shy of its intellectual fire or that it wants to go out on a limb with examinations of ways in which opportunity manifests differently for locals versus foreign outsiders. The skewering of the European outsider바카라�arriving with his own expectations and sets of prejudice바카라�unravels in several layers, each accentuating the impossibility of a common ground. Lines separating Sérgio and the Africans are firmly drawn. Tension between the two is shaded by the development debate, the possible loss of land and attached rituals.

Along with DP Ivo Lopes Araújo, Pinho finds a sexy, prickling energy. This isn바카라�t one of those coolly detached, rigorous introspections on an inherently thorny subject, but one that embraces paradoxes and dilemmas in all their blazing, tropical delirium. The camera is particularly alive to the way bodies of difference work together바카라�they clash and reconcile and are again sundered in a context rife with loaded political history. Is there any possibility of a bridge? Whenever the two ends meet, their tension reveals the actuality of power differentials in the equation. The historically powerful may not even be aware of his privilege바카라�it takes frequent raps from the natives Sérgio chances across and forges associations to remind him of his dominant position in the scene. Both Guilherme and Diara are initially cautious to maintain some aloofness from him, even as they do the needful, helping him ease into social circles. But as someone who바카라�s historically brought in ruin and trouble, his outsider status chafes.

Whenever Sérgio tries to be friendly and helpful to the locals, offering water to the workers on site, his fellow European colleagues warn him. One of them alerts him by way of kind notice that the place is a 바카라�slaughterhouse바카라�, that 바카라�black people are the worst바카라�, that they are racist to each other. They toss the tragedy that visited his Italian predecessor. The film withholds details, divulging at a later point. Till then, an ominous air hangs over Sérgio바카라�s dealings with the locals. There are boundaries he just can바카라�t cross. In an impassioned rant by a character, the film spells out its exasperation with 바카라�elites being in charge of progress바카라�. The hungry can바카라�t organize and rally for massive change. Hence, keys remain in the clutch of the already wealthy and established, who bend systems further to suit their whims.

Sprawling over a three-and-half-hour span, I Only Rest In The Storm is demanding. It prods you to think actively as it unhooks multiple nodes of critique. However Pinho바카라�s storytelling is so fluid and assured that the experience doesn바카라�t wear you down. At no point does the director바카라�s grip over the narrative바카라�s many, overlapping, disjunctive social matrixes slacken. Instead I Only Rest In The Storm is vigorous, provoking contemplation and unease in the same breath. As seamless as the film is, sleek with its queries, it disrupts comfortable positions the protagonist may occupy. There are frequent reiterations of instability at play바카라�the dislodging, queering of Sérgio바카라�s bumbling adventures. To him, satisfaction and triumph remain elusive. His attempts at reaching any kind of resolution바카라�sexual or at work바카라�are thwarted by the heavily palpable divide. There바카라�s a fundamental dissonance tearing him apart.

How Pinho handles the jarring interactions, the occasional spurt of intimacy between the protagonist and the locals has a queer vein. Dynamics he shares with Guilherme and Diara move between light rapport, sensuous teasing and latent, unavoidable chasms. This trio of actors captures every uncertain hint in a complex relationship where stakes keep changing.

The clue to the film바카라�s deeper belief lies in an early scene. Guilherme tells Sérgio, 바카라�We never seem to be where we are.바카라� Identity is caught in a constant liminal state바카라�shifting between belonging and being a permanent outlier. For those like Diara, their means are too limited for fretting over conscience. In a later scene, when Sérgio baulks at accepting an offer to file his report earlier, Diara rails if he thinks his European money is all clean. His hands are already bloodied before he can even consider acquitting himself. I Only Rest In The Storm encompasses this guilt바카라�its conflicted, unwieldy perception, glimpsed through a hazy, ambiguous lens.

I Only Rest In The Storm premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2025.