Tiago Guedes's Aquí ambitiously adapts Coetzee's Jesus trilogy into an on-screen saga that's rich in biblical allusion and philosophical enquiry but occasionally losing narrative momentum.

During a reading of what was then his forthcoming book The Childhood of Jesus, JM Coetzee expressed what he had in mind for its publication: "I had hoped that the book would appear with a blank cover and a blank title page, so that only after the last page had been read would the reader meet the title, namely The Childhood of Jesus."

Coetzee's Jesus trilogy, made up of The Childhood of Jesus, The Schooldays of Jesus and The Death of Jesus, is about a man and a young child - two strangers who find themselves flung together in an incidental father-son dependency.

After leaving behind their histories and languages, the pair meet during their crossing into a fictitious land where they're assigned names: Simón for the man, and David for the boy.

Now, seven years after the final book's publication, the trilogy has been brought to the screen by Portuguese director Tiago Guedes, becoming the film Aquí starring Manolo Solo and Alex Peláez as Simón and David, respectively.

Originating from a set of books totalling about 900 pages, Aquí is no doubt a saga - a three-hour and 20-minute one at that.

"The first cut lasted four hours...