I Only Rest In The Storm

Early on in director Pedro Pinho's I Only Rest In The Storm, there are a couple of scenes that I remember fondly. The first is a touching exchange between the lead character, Sérgio (Sergio Coragem), a Spanish environmental engineer, and a road checkpoint guard. Amid the inherent tension of a clear imbalance of power, the weary guard, stuck in an isolated spot, asks Sergio if he has a book he could read. After rummaging around in his car, Sergio finds one and the two part ways – with a slight awkwardness despite the kind gesture. Then there's the scene in a marketplace where Sérgio first meets Diára (Cleo Diára), who dumps her shopping bags with him when she flees an angry man who she appears to have swindled.

Each of these scenes are about connections, and while the first is fleeting, the second one will be a substantive relationship in the film's narrative, if we can use that word.

I Only Rest In The Storm revolves around Sérgio, who has been hired to carry out an impact report for a road-construction project in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau. His skin shimmers with a sheen of sweat from the oppressive African heat and until he crosses paths with Diára and Gui (Jonathan Guilherme), he carries the vibe of the affable outsider in a foreign land.

Sérgio, Diára and Gui's fluid relationship lacks clear definition, and the post-colonial tensions creep out from every crevice of his professional and personal experiences.

I Only Rest In The Storm might be more fittingly described as a song rather than a narrative. It's musical numbers aside, including an unnecessarily long disco scene, the film is structured with verses and the choruses of a song. In the choruses, Sérgio is reminded time and again that he's an outsider, which expresses the community's shared and unresolved anger towards colonialism.

You might even go so far as to suggest that Pinho's film sounds like the proverbial broken record – – repeating itself over and over again. There's the need to be cautious of being disparaging about a film that enters into conversation with the subject of colonialism and the feelings of those countries and cultures that lived under colonial rule. There are, however, problems with Pinho's film that define it as a beleaguered, if not a frustrating and annoying experience.

At 216 minutes, it's necessary that Pinho gives the audience reason to patiently indulge him but the film's problems mean it is more likely to disengage viewers.

The root of these problems is Pinho's desire to explore the space around Sérgio that is teeming with people. But a question he fails to ask himself is why he's making the film so expansive? He shows his knack for writing dialogue that digs into deeper ideas about colonialism, identity and human nature, but these moments get lost in the lack of concision, and his inability to recognise what the focus should be. This is evident early on, for example, when Sérgio finds himself at a party. Pinho conveys his character's awkwardness in a genuine way that's rare to see in cinema. Then, when he meets Diará at this party, a woman he remembers from the amusing escapade at the market, Pinho cuts away from their conversation to a woman singing – why?

A film that comes to mind, of an equally similar epic length, is Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse (The Beautiful Troublemaker), a 237-minute adaptation of Honoré de Balzac's Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu. What Rivette, unlike Pinho, understood and managed to execute, with no less challenging thematic and narrative layers, was the necessity of focus. And here lies another problem for I Only Rest In The Storm, which, ironically, is an agitated tale. It's so lost in post-colonial anger that it falls foul of being disingenuous or a trap for European audiences.

This anger is justified, but it's as if Pinho's film has been constructed, not to give voice to this trauma, but to punish white Europeans for their transgressions, through Sérgio's experience, who is constantly reminded that he's an outsider. Ironically, Guinea-Bissau is warm and welcoming, but it's also cold and distant. This is woven into the ambiguous fabric of Sérgio's relationship with Diára and Gui. Therein, the film might alienate the European audiences who are sympathetic, because there's the risk that they will feel trapped as Pinho struggles to employ his art in a constructive and engaging way. Instead of talking with his audience, he might be talking at them, which restricts I Only Rest In The Storm from entering into the thematic conversation it so enthusiastically wants to.

Reviewed on: 18 Jul 2025