Antonio Tabucchi

Lisbon, 1938. Mr. Pereira is the editor of the culture section of an evening paper. Although fascism is on the rise in Europe, like in nearby civil war Spain or even inside Portugal itself in the form of Salazar's regime, Pereira only concerns himself with writing bios and translating French novels. Things change after he hires a young writer as his assistant, getting to know also his girlfriend – both opponents to the regime – and reluctantly helps them when they begin to get in trouble for subversive activities. Eventually, he's forced to take a stand...

Spino, a pathologist, receives an unidentified body which looks familiar to him... himself, 30 years younger.

The enigmatic but vivid imagery of this loosely plotted film is based on a similarly evocative novel by the Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, Noturno Indiano. An old friend of the hero's has been living in Bombay with a prostitute. His friend Peter Schlemihl (Otto Tausig) is a concentration camp survivor, who went to India after being captivated by a photograph he saw there. When the prostitute writes to him in Europe asking that he rescue his friend from a mysterious malaise, he flies into India to try and help. When he gets to Bombay, he discovers that his friend has disappeared. Following the clues left behind by the friend, and based on his acquaintance with him, he journeys to Madras to speak to a Theosophist dignitary there, and then journeys on to Portugues Goa. With each step of his journey, the hero (Jean-Hugues Anglade) becomes more identified with his friend, and re-enacts in his own person the transformations he must have experienced.

In Lisbon, French author Paul meets various people from his past who uncover forgotten memories.

What is the shady affair in which the woman is involved, and what is her role? Is or isn't the man a marquis? Who is the young man played by Fabrizio Bentivoglio, and why does he own that car? Does Basque nationalism have to do anything with the story? Everybody has something to hide, everybody seems guilty.

"Dama de Porto Pim" tells the story of a rich woman who arrives at a little Portuguese island while her husband is in the II World War; there, a humble fisherman, promised to marry a girl of the town, falls in love with her, and she will also fall in love with him, but his husband could come back.