Amazingly prolific, 93-year-old Manoel de Oliveira returns with a seductive, tangled saga set on a genteel Portuguese manor. Wealthy scion, Antonio, and Jose, the housekeeper’s son, have grown up practically as brothers. Jose has loved the saintly Camilla since childhood, a feeling he believes she shares. But when it comes time to marry, the practical Camilla dispassionately chooses Antonio. Jose then takes up with the bewitching brothel madam Vanessa, who soon shares Antonio’s bed, challenging Camilla in her own home. In several remarkable verbal duels, Camilla waxes philosophical on good, evil and other metaphysical conundrums, all the while claiming indifference toward her rival. But soon all four characters are drawn into an infernal power play. Oliveira’s mischievous, distanced wit is fully evident here, both in the playful intellectual banter, and the delight taken in putting his characters through their moral paces.