For some unknown reason it took over 10 years to bring this biopic of one of the most significant singers in Portuguese music history to the big screen. António Variações was a larger than life powerful and controversial figure of his time, but to most of us this will probably be the first we have ever heard of him.

Born into a large rural family,  Variações was expected to work in their woodworking shop, but he had other ideas right from early childhood..  Even though he couldn’t write a note of music he knew that he wanted to make that his life. 

Writer /director João Maia however chooses to ignore the first part of Variações life and start his story much later when he is on the verge of finally achieving his dream.

V had a habit of recording his songs on a hand held tape recorder whilst in his bathroom…… he likes the acoustics there.  When he finally gets a recording contract, he  insists that all he wants to record are his own compositions . The Company however refuse and so he doesn’t get to record anything for the next four years.

Variações musical style is hard to define part neo-folk part rock part punk but also very queer.  It seems that he latter part is the one that freaks the  homophobic producers out.

Variações is a charismatic flamboyantly-dressed figure who makes no effort to hide his sexuality.  When he is not performing on stage he works as a fancy hairdresser, although he still insists that he is ‘just a barber’.  He is ‘discovered’ by a Portuguese music critic when he is living in Amsterdam and does take much persuading that he needs to return to Lisburn if he wants to be a successful musician.

Returning him reunites him with hairdresser Fernando Ataíde  (Filipe Duarte) who Maia unsubtly hints was his lover. The whole film skirts around Variações’s very obvious queerness although very sadly his family still deny his homosexuality and the that fact the cause of his death was a complication from AIDS. 

Actor Sérgio Praia portrays him as a extremely likable and popular artist obsessed with making his music, and its is so very sad that Variações died in 1984 aged just 39 just when he finally had a musical breakthrough