The cinema's most senior filmmaker, Manoel de Oliveira, brings us this deceptively simple, perfectly set gem. Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl is based on a short story by José Maria de Eéa de Queiroz, the renowned nineteenth-century author often regarded as the Flaubert of Portugal. While on a train bound for the Algarve, a beleaguered man (de Oliveira's grandson and regular lead, Ricardo Trépa) recounts his troubles to his sympathetic neighbour. He is Macério, a former Lisbon accountant who worked for his uncle's shop and fell madly in love with Luisa, the titular blond-haired beauty who lived across the street from his office window. Every day he would spy on her as she coquettishly waved her Chinese fan. When his uncle discouraged him from pursuing the relationship, Macério decamped for Cape Verde, where he could make enough money to ask for Luisa's hand. But an unexpected twist intervenes, and de Oliveira's detached irony, whimsical characters and anachronistic storytelling turn this miniature morality tale into another of his lasting accounts of thwarted love.