Independent U.S. distributors Music Box Films have revealed that they will release on Blu-ray Chilean director Raoul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon (2010), starring Adriano Luz, Clotilde Hesme, Ricardo Pereira, and Maria João Bastos. Last year, the film won three Portuguese Golden Globe Awards, as well as Silver Seashell Award for Best Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Street date is December 20th.
Raúl Ruiz's masterful adaptation of the eponymous nineteenth-century Portuguese novel (by Camilo Castelo Branco) evokes the complex intertwined narratives of Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens. The core story centers on Joao, the bastard child of an ill-fated romance between two members of the aristocracy who are forbidden to marry, and his quest to discover the truth of his parentage. But this is just the start of an engrossing tale that follows a multitude of characters whose fates conjoin, separate and then rejoin again over three decades in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.