Arquivo

In the decadent Portuguese court of the seventeenth century, Maria Noronha, age 13, is an extremely pale and frail child who is chronically ill. Suffering from pitiless tuberculosis, she is beset with high fever and violent seizures of hemoptysis. In an attempt to alleviate her suffering, she spends her days gathering poppies from the garden of her house and, at night, puts them under her pillow to then fall asleep. The poppies, however, have a devastating effect on Maria’s hours at dawn and in torment. Her troubled sleep is beset with the most terrible spectres and hallucinations: the decadent luxury of the nobility of Portugal, the counter-attack on the part of the Jesuits, the evil Inquisition, the madness and chastity of the King, tombs violated, the final battle, plague, blood, sperm. All that is left in the tormented existence of Maria Noronha are phantoms. Quem És Tu? is based on the Sebastian tragedy “Quem És Tu?”, by poet Almeida Garret (1799-1854).