Yellow is the color of my true love's walls, and floors, and almost everything else in this irreverent comedy of poor manners set in a Portugese boarding house. Charlie Chaplin meets Dostoyevsky's Underground Man in the figure of João de Deus, a natural-born tramp with a chip on his shoulder (and a thing for epaulets). This spindly, mangy hombre, with his cavernous cheeks and sunken eyes (oh yes, he is played by the writer-director Monteiro!), his bedbugs and his mouth sores, is the curse of his landlady. (What's worse, he lusts after the woman's clarinet-playing daughter, both in and out of her marching-band uniform.) Still, they share the same false pride and the same wretched prison-not the boarding house, but the body. With a dry humor reminiscent of the Czech new wave and a visual sensuality that is distinctly Portuguese; with dialogue and sound orchestrated to the touch of the image, Monteiro has given deadpan a new meaning. And he has created a picaresque tale for the anti-hero. By the end of the film, his João is a shell of his former shell, and what was black humor has quietly metamorphosed into aggravated assault-not so much the tragedy as the persistence of a ridiculous man. Much patience, bizarrely rewarded. Winner of the Silver Lion Award at Venice. --Judy Bloch