Botelho's version of Hard Times is one of the year's most original films, but don't expect a Little Dorrit. Tersely elliptical with every word and image made to count, it makes the intriguing suggestion that if the cinema had existed in Dickens' world, it might have looked like this. This is a film which asks audiences to make connections between formal film and literary devices, but once inside the style and minimal acting the rewards are both exciting and provocative. (John Gillett, London) Anyone who caught Botelho's A Portuguese Farewell (SFIFF, 1986) will not be surprised to learn that this modern-dress Dickens adaptation is bizarre, beautiful and superbly cinematic. Shot in stunning black-and-white, performed with a stylized detachment, and littered with intriguing narrative ellipses, the film is serious but never solemn. Indeed, for all the personal tragedy on view, much of it is very funny, with Dickens' purple, precise and eccentric text (often spoken in voice-over) both complemented by and contrasted with starkly poetic images. An imaginative adaptation to rival Fassbinder's Effi Briest or Rohmer's Perceval, the film knocks spots off Brit Lit costume dramas while simultaneously constituting a veritable love letter to film itself. Admirers of Ozu, Bresson, Resnais, Buñuel, or David Lynch should not miss. Geoff Andrew, Time Out