A portrait of a teenage couple whose dizzying love is doomed by forces out of their control, Fragile as the World is an openly romantic and melancholy cinematic poem whose rapturous imagery reveals the deep inspiration Azevedo Gomes draws from painting. Set partially within a penumbral Barbizon school forest, Azevedo Gomes’ second film evokes young love as a dark rite of passage, a transformative dream state that is embodied in the film’s oneiric narrative. The lasting spell cast by Fragile as the World lies as much in its haunting images as in those small mysteries that Azevedo gently refuses to fully explain, like the secret letterbox in which the young couple bury their amorous correspondence.