"In Abraham's Valley… things have happened… that belong to a world of dreams, the most hypocritical world there is."-Manoel De Oliveira

As if time were a plaything.

Spreading by whims of eyes.

Dreams without control. Only objects remain.

Spreading by whims of eyes. Eric Von Stroheim dreams when a film can be reduced to a series of cracks.

…it does not in dreams, only the shuffling of images. Understanding them achieves indifference.

A…and so we walk away with wonderment or anger or at worst distaste…

Ema smiled as if to bite them.

A talking film where words are nothing to speeding cars and limp walks. It could be told better in flashcards, ah but then you would lose the music! – and the narrator, who imparts information only to take up precise amounts of time, a space carved. What began as Madame Bovary is translated by the words of Augustina Bessa-Luis and illustrated back in time by Manoel de Oliveira. These three storytellers on one page rub one each other into mere shavings, allowing yet another to begin tracing.

Ross Telford Wilbanks (2009)