Two Times João Liberada (2025) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: whenever the filmmaking goes from background to foreground
Take a Drink: for each medieval wood-carving
Take a Drink: whenever our lead actress questions what she’s doing or how she’s doing it
Do a Shot: for every mention of The Inquisition
By: Henry J. Fromage (Three Beers) –
It comes as no surprise, particularly when in our apparently “modern” times where their bodies are somehow still exploited as political battlefields, that transgender figures in history have consistently been targets of persecution.
Two Times João Liberada is about a film within a film in which transgender actress João portrays Liberada, who was persecuted by The Inquisition in medieval times for daring to live as she’d always been- a woman.
A Toast
This is a medieval horror story about a trans woman who was discovered by the Inquisition and put on trial for being who she was (and always had been- it’s unclear whether she was born intersex, compounding the tragedy of her treatment). It’s also, or really moreso, an examination of the trans actress playing her and her process in developing and connecting to this character from the past.
Director Paula Tomás Marques fills the frame with attractive and textural filmstock-shot visuals, which gives everything a bit of a throw-back, almost 60s arthouse feel- the quick Robert Bresson reference feels quite intentional. It’s June João’s central performance that holds things together, though, both as actress and as the character she is portraying in the film within the film.
I also did very much enjoy the energy of the visit/vision from Liberada’s sassy ghost towards the end.
Beer Two
This will likely play a bit too artsy and inside (filmmaking) baseball for some, with time taken up on meta meanderings that could have been spent better digging further into character, either Liberada’s or João’s, especially considering the fleet 69 minute runtime.
Beer Three
This feels like a thoroughly modern lens through which to examine Liberada’s character- the filmmakers don’t seem to want to tussle too much with a much less enlightened time when Liberada herself (likely based on the real person María Durán) was unlikely to think in such progressive terms. This in particular rises to the fore in the argument about what actually happened to her, versus what João would like to think happened. It makes for a poignant ending in callback, but divorced from any reality poor Liberada (or Durán) likely experienced.
Verdict
Two Times João Liberada is an intriguing exercise in connecting transgender souls across centuries of life and struggle.
