This is a story about love and about truth. The honesty starts behind the camera - Miguel Gonçalves Mendes captured that truth as if he wasn't there. And therefore, he was, inside and aside. That is exactly what gives us this enormous feeling of getting to know the intimate being of one of the greatest writers of all times: Saramago and his Pilar. There's something curious about the movie title "José and Pilar" - "pilar" (as "pillar") in Portuguese means "firm, upright, insulated support for a superstructure". Pilar was indeed the pillar for Saramago. And so was he to her the other way around, as in great love stories must be.

It's all very easy to reduce a documentary like this to just that: a documentary. I like to think of it as a window, nay, a door. I'm Portuguese and, beside a theatre play my dad bought for me and made me stand in line to have it signed by Saramago when I was a child, I never managed to enjoy reading his books. Loved the stories, struggled with the novels.So, it was a huge surprise when I discovered this man, playful and witty as dense and morose; when I discovered his wife, thus far a very behind-the-scenes person, very outspoken but seldom seen; and the mere thought of having heaps of footage and manage to edit years of shadowing the couple to a mere two hours, seamlessly stitched together.I couldn't help but feel deeply moved by the episodes the film depicts, the portraits the camera takes all the way through time and the love story between a rather senior Portuguese writer and a rather younger Spanish journalist. In Portugal, we say, 'love knows no age.' It does, actually. However, it knows no time. And that's what 'José And Pilar' tells us.I fell compelled to send a copy to all my friends who, as I, live outside Portugal. It really is that good. Watch it and make sure you take it all in.

The Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago was never an easy writer or agreeable public figure. Moreover, his political inclinations, a mixture of Iberism and Communism, were quite the opposite of mine. So I must admit that I sat down to watch the documentary with some degree of prejudice.However the opening and the quality of the photography captivated me immediately and I could not stop wandering how the Director managed to make such a remarkably enjoyable documentary with such persona.It certainly helped the fact that his young wife – Pilar – is such a lively and interesting person. She is the personification of the vibrant qualities we find among modern Spaniards. But what captivated me more was how she could devote herself so intensely to an elderly and sick husband.The Director, being himself an admirer of José, did not attempt to color or capture only the rosy moments of the Portuguese writer. He gives a truthful and yet endearing image of the couple.The secret probably lies in the way he manages to show that love knows no age barriers. Undoubtedly, this is an Oscar-winning candidate.

José e Pilar isn't (just?) a documentary, it's a well crafted story that no one wrote, that unfolded as the 4 years of filming passed by.You won't just see the Nobel award winner José Saramago, his love for writing and the tremendous respect for the people he wrote for. You will see first hand and for real how two people can be so in sync, so complementary and yet so different.And how life spins more and faster than the Earth. How some people actually do live forever. And how people sometimes take a long time to find their calling and their true love.Corny as it may sound said by me, you'll find nothing but beauty in this film.