A monumental and mysterious film indirectly based on the classic of classics: Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert. Stimulated by the enthusiasm that his cutter Valérie Loiseleux displayed while editing his penultimate film for the literary life of Emma Bovary, De Oliveira decided to try to make his own Bovary. He regarded a direct approach to the original as impossible for a Portuguese film-maker; the French cultural world would never tolerate a foreigner tackling their Bovary. (Anyway, Claude Chabrol’s Bovary was just in production.)De Oliveira chose for a round-about route. He asked the writer Augustina Bessa-Luis to write him a ‘Portuguese Bovary’. Bessa-Luis situated her version in the northern wine district Douro and gave it the name of the location as a title. The biblical reference (to Abraham) appealed greatly to De Olivei¡ra and he was also charmed by the strange people that Bessa-Luis introduced in her novel and whom she had based on obser¡ving people in Douro.In writing his screenplay, De Oliveira followed Bessa-Luis’ book, but he already knew which actors he wanted to use for which characters. In this sense, his Emma (called Ema by De Oliveira) is the actress Leonor Silveira to a tee. The film was shot entirely on location in the area that inspired Bessa-Luis to her variation on universal provincialism.
