There are few filmmakers of any age who are as prolific and unpredictable as Portugal's phenomenal Manoel de Oliveira, a youthful 90. Anxiety arrives in three interlocking parts, all centered on themes of death and eternity and presented sequentially as social comedy, existential tragedy, and lyrical epic. Horrified to discover that his son is aging, an old man tries to convince him to commit suicide. In the 1930s, a courtesan faces death, stoically dismissing her life as "a mere detail." The final episode, drawn from a Portuguese folktale, tells of a village girl with golden fingertips who is transformed into the spirit of a river. For all his abstract intellectualism, Oliveira's films are quietly, gloriously mad.-Dave Kehr