A bird-watcher in jungles of Portugal gets lost and embarks on a journey of rediscovery of self and religion.Apparently ,this Portuguese film is an homoerotic allegory of the life of St Anthony of Padua,who is considered the patron saint of lost things,and whose original name was Fernando.The film is shot at beautiful locations to start with and works well till the ornithologist gets lost while kayaking.Then begins the torture,as the film descends from realism into supposed transcendental surrealism.There appear two Chinese lesbians tied up in a bondage relationship,members of a cult who dance and kill a boar in the middle of the night,a shepherd by the name of Jesus who makes out with the protagonist and who the latter ends up stabbing,nude huntresses riding horses and remains of a monastery.I am not sure if this work shud be classified as magic realism.The ornithologist was on medication since the very beginning,and ends up losing his pills when he meets with an accident.It can be argued then that whatever happened after that was in his mind.I watched the film because this film was on the ' to be watched' list of a friend.Maybe the cinematography made him like this nut job.

A staunch queer cinema visionary and nonconformist, Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues' fifth feature beguilingly takes a leap of faith onto a religious theme, a pilgrimage to Saint Anthony of Padua, conspicuously transcribing its story into the existential trials and tribulations of our titular ornithologist Fernando (Hamy), which is also St. Anthony's birth name, stranded in a modern-day Portuguese waterway and forests.

Fernando, an atheist from the word go, embarks on his stork-scouting journey with gusto and alacrity, and the implication that it is not his first sortie in the area makes his adventure quite up his alley. Few background information is purveyed, other than he is under medication and has a male lover who is caring for him. Contrasting Fernando's bird-watching/telescopic angle with different bird's-eye views, it is the modus operandi brings home a numinous frisson of watching and simultaneously being watched, literally sublimates the nature's gaze with a plethora of wild feathered friends hovering around incessantly through the film. When Fernando's kayak is upset during the rapids, the story starts to take shape into a multi-layered religious mythology through Fernando's various real/surreal encounters, garnished with sexual innuendos (undressed and tied- up by two young Chinese female God-bothers, a sadomasochistic position enticing one's fantasy; the urolagnia experience in the darkness among a contingent of masqueraded roarers), and an in- the-buff dalliance with a deaf-mute shepherd boy named Jesus (Cagiao), which ends in manslaughter, a startling incident but concocted with blasé wantonness.

Conceivably, when one liquidates Jesus, there is nothing but a road to redemption beckons him, Fernando must carry on his mythical transmogrification into a pious St. Antony by dint of his self- inflicted ritual for absolution (that is where symbolic tunnel, tableaux vivants and inscrutable gestures abound), consummated by being dispatched by the alter ego of Jesus, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, if credits must be given to Rodrigues' wheeze of contemplating a grand mythos within an entrancing temporal sphere, his didactic exegesis is less a merit to be reckoned with.

Leading actor Paul Hamy credibly shoulders on a role which requires boldness and physical exertion, instils his open-faced earthiness into the overlaying mystique and alone-in-the-woods background, which successfully retains Fernando in the cynosure, even when narrative longueur inevitably lurks. Tellingly, the film renders a captivating landscape to those eyes yearning for natural's majestic design, whether it is the picturesque on the surface or the uncanny residing in the deep, also the foley artists (Nuno Carvalho and Martin Delzescaux) ply their own distinctive aural intrusion to that latter effect: eerie, preternatural and strident. In the end of the day, THE ORNITHOLOGIST is another contrived fable trying to mythicize religion in order to elicit a sense of meta-sanctity of our own existence, but the fruition thuddingly slumps between artsy-fartsy and nonplussing, on top of that, where are the storks, anyway?

An ornithologist is out surveying birds in the wild when his canoe is swept over rapids. He is rescued by two Chinese hikers but they, due to their religious beliefs, perceive him as a threat. So they tie him to a tree.

Dull, meandering and pointless. From the outset you can tell this is going to be drawn out unnecessarily, as we see long scenes of birds, and nothing else. (Yeah, yeah, Mr Director, we get it: he's an ornithologist, as if the title and plot summary didn't give it away).

After all the gratuitous bird shots, the plot, what there is, just goes in random directions. Just when you think at last things might be coming together, something random and bizarre happens. Last few scenes make no sense at all.

Avoid.