Fernando Pessoa, one of the greatest writers of the Portuguese language, established a gigantic parallel universe creating a series of heteronyms to survive his loneliness of genius. José Saramago, Nobel laureate of literature in 1998, wrote this novel returning the heteronymous Ricardo Reis to Portugal, after 16 years of exile in Brazil.1936 is the year of all danger, Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's Nazism, the terrible Spanish civil war and Salazar's Estado Novo in Portugal. Two women, Lídia and Marcenda are Ricardo Reis' carnal and impossible passions. Literature as well as cinema allows "Life and Death is all one". Fantastic realism is the subject-matter of this movie.