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Inheritances of Bad Living: Anxiety, Exhaustion, and the Mirage of a Possible Life in Mal Viver / Viver Mal by João Canijo

“In the diptych Mal Viver and Viver Mal, João Canijo seems to film a single human gesture repeated in countless forms: the difficulty of being in the world. In both films, discomfort is a dense air breathed from the very first frame, a climate that seeps into bodies and spaces alike.”

Por Mauro Lukasievicz

Ilustración: Laura Santos

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In the diptych Mal Viver and Viver Mal, João Canijo seems to film a single human gesture repeated in infinite forms: the difficulty of being in the world. In both films, malaise is a thick air that can be breathed from the very first frame, a climate that permeates bodies and spaces alike. It is not an external conflict, but an internal erosion. Canijo does not film great tragedies, but rather the silent decay of those who have lost faith in the possibility of a livable life. Depression here is not a passing state, but a way of perceiving and existing in the world. Seeing the world becomes a burden, and anxiety is the body’s way of trying, unsuccessfully, to keep breathing.

In Mal Viver, the story centers on the women who run a hotel on Portugal’s northern coast. They are women who, instead of inhabiting time, merely wait for it. The hotel seems to exist outside of history, in a suspended present that neither advances nor recedes, as if its walls had absorbed so much pain that they can no longer bear the passing of the clock. There, the characters coexist with a sadness that needs no explanation. Depression, in this universe, is not the consequence of a specific trauma, but the result of a life maintained in the same gray tone. Canijo films that stillness with an almost cruel precision: the rooms resemble vitrines where the characters display their exhaustion. Nothing happens, and yet everything slowly rots.

Anxiety appears as the reverse of that immobility. It is the repressed energy that accumulates when desire finds no possible outlet. The characters in Mal Viver move little, but their thoughts spin like animals trapped in a pen. The internal tension becomes visible in minimal gestures: a held breath, a sentence that never reaches completion, a gaze that dodges another gaze. Anxiety needs no words; it is enough to feel that something is about to explode but never does. It is an existence suspended between guilt and inertia.

Viver Mal, the second film of the diptych, introduces movement into that paralyzed universe. The hotel’s guests—couples, families, strangers crossing paths over a weekend—bring with them a different energy: the need to speak, to act, to escape the silence. If in Mal Viver malaise expressed itself as paralysis, here it manifests as excess. The characters talk incessantly, argue, wound each other with words that seek not understanding but survival. The camera, now more dynamic, follows them with an almost physical urgency, as if trying to keep up with the rhythm of their despair. Yet this movement leads nowhere. Anxiety becomes noise: a succession of empty gestures that attempt to hide the lack of meaning. No one truly communicates. Conversations turn into overlapping monologues, where each person speaks only to reaffirm their own pain. Canijo films this chaos with great precision but without theatricality: what is at stake is not the representation of drama, but the experience of emotional confinement. Social life, romantic bonds, even family ties, are mere masks for a deeper solitude.

Both films seem to share the same root: the fear of existence itself. In Mal Viver, that fear takes the form of silence; in Viver Mal, it takes the form of a scream. They are two manifestations of the same anxiety, two ways of failing to inhabit the present. Canijo seems to suggest that contemporary life—with its mixture of self-consciousness, fatigue, and the need for control—has made spontaneity impossible. No one knows how to live without justification, without watching their own life as if it were a scene already written. That is why the characters seem trapped in a mirror reflecting their gestures endlessly. There is no escape, only repetition.

The titles Mal Viver and Viver Mal operate as a perverse play of symmetries. The hotel in Ofir, setting of both films, is the heart of this universe. More than a place, it is a mental state. The hotel is a refuge that has turned into a prison. Whoever enters does not leave unscathed. Guests arrive hoping to rest, but end up confronted with their own unease. What is remarkable is that Canijo avoids any explicit psychology. There are no diagnoses, no discourses on mental illness, no attempts at redemption—or even heroism. Depression is not explained; it is simply shown as a way of life that has exhausted itself. The characters no longer expect anything, but neither do they know what to do with the void. That ambiguity—between resignation and the desire to escape—is the essence of the diptych. To live badly means accepting that happiness is a structural impossibility; to live poorly is the painful awareness of that acceptance.

Anxiety, in this context, is almost a form of resistance. It is the only thing that keeps the characters in motion, even if within a vicious circle. In Viver Mal, bodies stir, cross paths, brush against one another; yet every contact is a misunderstanding. There is something desperately human in that persistence—the search for meaning amid the noise. Conversations between couples or friends are failed attempts to find an exit from emotional confinement. Anxiety is the price they pay for being unable to endure the world’s silence.

Canijo’s characters are not sick; they are contemporary. Mal living is the symptom of an era that has lost the capacity to believe in anything. Human relationships persist out of inertia; love has become a form of negotiation; leisure time, a pause between two bouts of anguish. In this sense, the hotel is a microcosm of the modern world: a place where everyone seeks rest, yet no one finds relief.

In Mal Viver, when a character says “I don’t know how to live,” it is not a confession of fragility but the acknowledgment of a universal truth. Not knowing how to live is the starting point of all contemporary existence. The difference lies in how one survives that realization: with resignation, with humor, with rage, or with fear. Canijo’s characters choose anxiety because it is the only thing that reminds them they are still alive. Watching both films back-to-back produces a hypnotic effect—it means entering a strange rhythm, between drowsiness and tension, where time itself seems to have slipped out of joint. One ends up breathing in sync with the characters, sharing their discomfort. It is not empathy, but contagion.

Mal Viver and Viver Mal are two chapters of the same idea about the human condition. There are no heroes or villains, only beings trying to hold themselves together amid an unbearable calm. Bad living is not an accident but a kind of destiny. Canijo films it with a precision that unsettles because it includes us: every modern person has surely felt that causeless anxiety, that nameless sadness, that fatigue that no sleep can cure. The underlying idea seems to be that living well is not the opposite of living badly, but an illusion that barely allows us to survive a little longer—and that life, according to Canijo’s diptych, is a failed attempt at happiness. He films it with a kind of tragic tenderness, where even suffering has dignity.

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Selecciones: Locarno 2025 (Ganadora Mejor Dirección) – DocLisboa – Tallinn Black Nights – Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival – Viennale – El Gouna Film Festival – Seminici