Arabian Nights

Directed by Miguel Gomes

Reviewed by Garry Maddox

Three and a half stars

Wildly imaginative and deeply political, Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights portrays the struggles of working class Portuguese under extreme austerity measures.

It has screened in three markedly different instalments over almost six-and-a-half hours in the Sydney Film Festival's competition for "courageous, audacious and cutting-edge" cinema.

Volume 1: The Restless One blends documentary and drama, real life and fable, comedy and tragedy. It starts with memories of laid-off shipyard workers before Gomes himself makes a surreal appearance.

The maverick filmmaker, best known in this country for the 2012 romantic fantasy Tabu, is angsting about making the movie. When he realises it's all too much and flees the set, the crew follow with the camera running.

Following is a comic parable about how the country's political and financial masters set the national deficit called – in a clue about what motivates their decision-making – The Men With a Hard-On. Another imaginative scene has a judge putting a cockerel on trial for crowing too early. And in a return to documentary, three unemployed men tell their stories of struggle before taking part in a grim New Year's Day ocean swim.

Volume 2: The Desperate One is more dramatic with more colourful tales as Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate) emerges more as the fictional narrator of the tales in the style of the original Arabian Nights.

The first is a tale about an escapee from the police who becomes a hero.

There is also a long trial in an open-air courtyard with a red-robed female judge taking a case in which two tenants, a woman and her thick son, are accused of stealing furniture from their landlord. But the case spirals into a bizarre complicated mess with speeches from a genie, a deaf woman using sign language, a pantomime cow and other colourful characters.

There is a grim comic moment when the judge calls for a lie detector, which turns out to be a man with a machete.

The final section of this instalment runs through the different owners of a dog named Dixie, including a couple who leave him with two recovering junkies when they disappear to a grim fate.

Volume 3: The Enchanted One starts with a lushly filmed series of ancient scenes that sees Scheherazade find a lover, meet a breakdancing thief named Elvis, then ride a giant ferris wheel with her father.

The instalment then shifts into verite documentary territory, with a written narration explaining the lives of bird trappers who train finches for singing contests, interspersed with a sad story about a Chinese student who falls for a married policeman she meets during a demonstration.

The film, Gomez is at pains to say on screen, is not an adaption of the famous Arabian Nights, but Scheherazade appears in both modern and ancient guises to link the stories.

It's an ambitious film that started with Gomes commissioning journalists to find stories of life under austerity then dramatising them.

There are scenes of blazing brilliance, burning with rage, and others that are affecting tales of a blighted country. But some scenes are just strange, unfocused or drag on too long, which makes Arabian Nights a rewarding but uneven experience over the three instalments.

As a venting of his anger over the shabby treatment of his fellow Portuguese, Gomes takes a visionary but eccentric approach that will restrict his film to only a limited number of viewers.

Did it deserve to win the festival competition? For my money, there were two more successfully realised films that fit the competition criteria: Jafar Panahi's Iranian political drama Tehran Taxi and Sean Baker's micro-budget LA comedy Tangerine.

You could also mount a good case for Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's American indie comedy Me and Earl and the Dying Girl being rewarded for its bold blend for comedy and tragedy.

But the jury clearly loved the crazy ambition, burning politics and wild imagination of Arabian Nights. And seeing how badly Portugal is faring, no doubt Gomes could do with the $62,000 prize.