Failure, Erasure, and Oblivion in João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata’s Asian Trilogy: Red Dawn, The Last Time I Saw Macao , and Iec Long

This chapter explores João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata’s Macao films – Alvorada Vermelha (Red Dawn, 2011), A Última Vez que Vi Macau (The Last Time I Saw Macao, 2011), and Iec Long (2015). They recast many of the topics present in Rodrigues’ earlier work: the revision of classical genre; the transnational condition present in China China (2007) and Mahjong (2013); transgressive, at times abject, corporeality; and the charged presence of animals, both interchangeable with and symbolic of humans. But the Macao films embed these themes in a nostalgia and reminiscence, both through Rui Guerra’s allusions to his childhood years on the island and through the subtle recycling of a pre-existing audiovisual repertoire. As such, this chapter investigates these films’ insistent materiality. The object world is, in these films, a memory holder, a stand-in for corporeality, a sign to be decoded, and a narrative trigger. It contributes to communicating the fluidity of borders and identities, and the liquidity of desire, but it also purveys moments of opacity and blockage. Such contrapuntal pull accounts for much of the style and affect in these stories.