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A trans woman in Lisbon struggles with her drug addict boyfriend in Lisbon. While she loses her power in the drag queen bar where she works due to her aging. Her son who was a soldier shows up unexpectedly to her house bringing more trouble to her life. She reaches a breaking point that leads her to go on a roadtrip with her partner to relax. However when she comes back home she finds out that she has little time left. She ends up dying. In her cast she is dressed in a suit due to her desire to have a burial at the church

Forbidden Love in Portuguese Cinema © 2025 by  Maria Goncalves Garcia, Akase Enun, Paige Mazzola, Agustina Piran, Harrison Hasselbring, Hakop Ansuryan is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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Forbidden Love in To Die Like a Man (2009)

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Forbidden Love in To Die Like a Man (2009)

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To Die Like a Man has various themes about forbidden love. The major theme in the movie is Tonia’s relationship with Rosario. Tonia, who is a trans woman that works as a drag queen, is in love with the man who makes her costumes. Rosario is a drug addict that drains her. He runs away, sells her possessions, and is violent towards her. Their love can be seen in our society as toxic. But it can also be looked at through another lens, since Tonia is a trans woman and Rosario is a cis man. A relationship with these people isn’t seen in a good light in a religious country like Portugal. Therefore, their love is seen as forbidden from many angles ,which makes it more tragic.

Forbidden Love in Portuguese Cinema © 2025 by  Maria Goncalves Garcia, Akase Enun, Paige Mazzola, Agustina Piran, Harrison Hasselbring, Hakop Ansuryan is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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Victims of discrimination in Portugal due to their sexual orientation

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Victims of discrimination in Portugal due to their sexual orientation

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Portugal: sexual orientation discrimination by type 2024 | Statista

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In Portugal, as of 2024, 31 percent of respondents were subjected to discrimination by health professionals or to physical aggression due to their sexual orientation.

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Variações: Guardian Angel (2019) follows the life of António Variações, a Portuguese musician who defied societal norms through his music and love life. Set in 1980s Portugal, the film explores his forbidden romance with another man, a relationship that clashed with the era’s conservative values. As Variações rises to fame, his love remains hidden, reflecting the silencing of queer identities at the time. His music becomes a form of self-expression, capturing the tension between personal freedom and social acceptance. The title Guardian Angel symbolizes his lover’s quiet presence, inspiring him despite the impossibility of their love.

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CC BY-NC 4.0

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Analysis of the Themes in To Die Like a Man (2009)

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Analysis of the Themes in To Die Like a Man (2009)

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To Die like a man has a melancholic camera. The movie deals with issues of self acceptance, love, and being queer. Tonia, who is a trans woman, doesn’t truly accept herself. At times, Rosario calls her a man, an act that hurts her. At the end of the movie when she is on her deathbed she states that she wants to die like a man. Her plastic surgeries such as her silicon started to leak into her body making her deathly ill. This can be seen as her feminine side being rejected by her body. She can’t accept being trans. Rosario kills himself after her death, although he wasn’t a good partner this act illustrates to us how much he loved her.  In the last scene of the movie we can see her by Rosario, both in caskets and dressed in suits. Portugal is a catholic country, therefore being trans and gay isn't well accepted by most people and the church. Tonia being dressed in a suit at her deathbed can also be seen as the status quo winning. She dies like a man on the side of the man who she loved.

Forbidden Love in Portuguese Cinema © 2025 by  Maria Goncalves Garcia, Akase Enun, Paige Mazzola, Agustina Piran, Harrison Hasselbring, Hakop Ansuryan is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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The first half of the movie, titled Paradise Lost, takes place in present-day Lisbon. It follows an elderly woman named Aurora. She is very eccentric, and as she ages her gambling problem increases, as do her tendencies to ramble about odd dreams. As her health problems continue to worsen, she begins to mention a man named Ventura, a name that her caretakers had never heard of. She urges her caretaker to track him down, and when she does, he begins to recount stories of their time in Africa during the last years of Portuguese rule. This begins the part of the story called Paradise. The second half takes us back to Aurora’s youth in colonial Africa, revealing a passionate but forbidden affair with Gian Luca Ventura. Their love is intense and destructive, mirroring the broader historical tensions of Portuguese colonial rule. The backdrop of war, class divides, and racial hierarchies shapes their romance, ultimately leading to betrayal and tragedy. Forbidden Love in Portuguese Cinema © 2025 by Maria Goncalves Garcia, Akase Enun, Paige Mazzola, Agustina Piran, Harrison Hasselbring, Hakop Ansuryan is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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The film captures the taboo of same-sex love in 1980s Portugal, where homosexuality was heavily stigmatized. António’s relationship with Fernando, his long-time friend and lover, exists in a climate of intolerance, forcing him to hide his true self from the public. As Variações' music career rises, he struggles to balance his personal truth with his public image, unable to fully embrace his love due to societal condemnation.

The title, Guardian Angel, symbolizes Fernando’s quiet presence someone who loves, supports, and inspires Variações from the shadows, despite being denied visibility. Their love, though deep and genuine, remains silenced, reflecting the invisible reality of queerness in a conservative society. The film highlights the heartbreak of love hidden in fear, where the inability to love openly becomes a wound that never fully heals.

CC BY-NC 4.0

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Aurora and Ventura’s love in Tabu is passionate yet doomed, bound by secrecy and betrayal since Aurora is married. Aurora and Ventura are not together in the traditional sense but are very in love. Decades later, Ventura's tale reveals how forbidden love lingers not as something that fades, but as a persistent mix of remorse, longing, and nostalgia. Their concealed enthusiasm is reflected in the film's silent previous scenes, which prioritize snatched moments over outspoken statements. Despite being exciting, their romance causes them to suffer and forces them to confront difficult moral choices. Tabu portrays forbidden love as being something unachievable, ever remembered with both delight and pain, rather than glamorizing it.

In Tabu, forbidden love isn’t just about passion, it’s mixed up in the bigger picture of colonialism and power. Aurora and Ventura’s affair takes place in colonial Africa, where race, class, and status dictate everything, including relationships. Their love isn’t just frowned upon because Aurora is married; it’s also restricted by the rigid structures of the world around them. In a way, their affair mirrors colonial rule—it thrives in secrecy, feeds off inequality, and is ultimately doomed to fall apart. In the same way that colonial empire crumbles, so does their relationship, because both were built on unstable foundations that weren’t meant to last. Tabu shows that forbidden love isn’t just about breaking rules. It leaves scars, just like colonialism does, with consequences that can’t simply be erased. Forbidden Love in Portuguese Cinema © 2025 by Maria Goncalves Garcia, Akase Enun, Paige Mazzola, Agustina Piran, Harrison Hasselbring, Hakop Ansuryan is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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Forbidden Love in Portuguese Cinema © 2025 by Maria Goncalves Garcia, Akase Enun, Paige Mazzola, Agustina Piran, Harrison Hasselbring, Hakop Ansuryan is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0