Within the splendor of her country estate, Alfreda attempts to decipher the source of the Virgin Mary's reported wealth, debating with a Bible scholar about the limits of sainthood and the material world. Meanwhile, a team of crooks plans to fleece Alfreda through an elaborate fabricated miracle that goes strangely awry. The Magic Mirror is one of Oliveira's several adaptations of the work of his close friend Agustina Bessa-Luis, one of Portugal's foremost modernist novelists. Here he turns her eponymous novel into a mysterious satire of religion and the idle rich in the tradition of Buñuel's late films. A sophisticated comedy and a deeply philosophical work, The Magic Mirror boasts a cast of Oliveira regulars as well as the great Marisa Paredes.