FILM REVIEW: THE SECOND MOTHER

Val (Regina Casé) in The Second Mother.

Ma and order

By John Esther

In one of the nice neighborhoods of São Paulo, an upper-middle class family lives a life of monotonous order where everyone knows her or his place.

The official matriarch of the family, Bárbara (Karine Teles), seems to be of some importance to the fashion world. It is never exactly disclosed what she does, but we know it keeps her away from home during the week. Her husband, Carlos (Lourenco Mutarelli), was once an artist, but now just hangs around the house all day. He inherited money from his hardworking father so why labor? Their son, Fabinho (Michel Joelsas), is a teenage kid with all the advantages and none of the discipline to carve much of an identity for himself. He likes to swim and smoke pot. 

Holding the three in check is Val (Regina Casé), one of those quintessential domestic helpers who keeps everything in the house running on time and on target. She is there to see the casa of "Dona" Barbara make an impression to all that enter, wake up "Don" Carlos every morning at 11:00 a.m. to start another pointless day, and keep "her treasure" Fabinho out of trouble.

While it is clear the family is highly dependent on Val to assure the order of things, deep down they see Val as a second class citizen. They are nice and generous to her, but Val may not use the pool, sit with them at their dinner table, and she must always make sure she has done her chores before any she makes any personal requests.

Val is more than happy to accept this master/slave arrangement.

This longstanding modus operandi is disrupted with the arrival of Jéssica (Camila Márdila). Jessica has come from the northeast of Brazil to the most populous city in the Western and Southern hemisphere to study architecture. Raised by a person called Sandra, but financially supported by Val, Jessica is Val's daughter who she has not seen in 10 years.

The idea that someone of Jessica's social class would want to pursue a career in architecture is amusing to the Dona, but she takes it in kind stride. The Don takes it in a much kinder stride, clearly infatuated with the young woman who has just arrived in his home. (Click, click.)

While Val is proud of her daughter, she finds it very upsetting that Val does not know her place in the home. "She walks around with that expression likes she's a president," says Val -- who Jessica never refers to as "mom."

Soon enough, tensions accumulate in the household. There is a new element upsetting the natural order of life along class lines. Something has to give.

Written and directed by Anna Muylaert, The Second Mother maintains its charm and amusement during its nearly two-hour running time thanks to some fine performances by the cast, the notable art direction by Marquinho Pedroso, and superb cinematography by Barbara Alvarez.

The story about a young woman coming from "the outside" entering a particular milieu and shaking things up is not entirely new, but there is enough skill in The Second Mother to make this film worth viewing. The last 10 minutes of the film or so will raise a few questions about stability in the future, but out of a little chaos must rise a little (bit of) new order.

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FILM REVIEW: FUTURO BEACH

A scene from Futuro Beach.

Drowning by numbers

 

By Don Simpson

 

Fueled by Suicide’s dissonant electro-punk anthem “Ghost Rider,” two motorcyclists speed across the dunes of the idyllic Brazilian coastline. They disembark their bikes at the titular Futuro Beach to immerse themselves in the dangerous surf. Heiko (Fred Lima) and Konrad (Clemens Schick) find themselves dragged underwater by an insatiable undertow, attracting the attention of two lifeguards. Heiko falls prey to an accidental drowning, leaving Konrad, his close friend and former brother-in-arms, directionless and alone in a foreign land.

 

Riddled by the heroic guilt of his inability to save Heiko, Donato (Wagner Moura), the lifeguard, offers to comfort Konrad; a relationship transpires, eventually convincing Donato to abandon his family — including 10-year-old brother, Ayrton (Savio Ygor Ramos) — and relocate to the landlocked city of Berlin. It is not long before Donato begins to feel, quite literally, like a fish out of water. Gone are his days of being a heroic lifeguard at Brazil’s most dangerous beach, as are his days of playing Aquaman for his aquaphobic younger brother; now Donato is an utter nobody in a concrete jungle. Rather than basking in the Brazilian sunlight, Donato is reduced to soaking in the dance floor lights of underground nightclubs.

 

Many years later, in the final third of this clearly defined three-act narrative, a much older Ayrton (Jesuíta Barbosa) appears in Berlin to scold Donato for abandoning him. It is the classic trope of a hero destined for disappointment. In his submissive attempt to comfort Konrad after Heiko’s death, Donato devastated Ayrton, the one person who admired him unconditionally; thus, Karim Aïnouz’s Futuro Beach contemplates the age-old choice between family and love.

 

Playing with the obvious metaphors of drowning and being lost at sea, Aïnouz presents Donato as a powerful swimmer in Brazil who can barely tread water in Germany. After submerging himself into a tumultuous relationship with Konrad, Donato becomes a lifeless body, completely overwhelmed by life’s rough currents. If there is one common theme throughout Futuro Beach, it is the loss of control, or the human inability to remain buoyant. There are ups and downs in life, the secret is to not let those evil undercurrents overcome you.

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FILM REVIEW: ONCE UPON A TIME, VERONICA

Veronica (Hermila Guedes) and Gustavo (Joao Miguel) in Once Upon a Time, Veronica.

Examining a life worth living

By Ed Rampell

Despite its fairy tale title, Brazilian writer-director ​Marcelo Gomes’ Once Upon a Time, Veronica is a realistic look at contemporary urban South America. What’s engrossing about this film is that it takes viewers behind the scenes into the psyche and even soul of its protagonist, Veronica da Silva Fernandes (Hermila Guedes). Who are these women? By going beyond the celluloid stereotypes of countless Carmen Miranda movies, 1959’s mythic Black Orpheus, etc., and revealing Veronica’s inner life, we have a fully fleshed out picture of a 21^stcentury women living in Recife, on Brazil’s northeastern coast.

Much of the truthfully drawn film is concerned with Veronica’s private life; its nudity and sex acts are fairly graphic by puritanical Yankee standards, where couples often make love beneath blankets. But our heroine is far more than a beach blanket bimbo or just another “hot Latin Lover.” In fact, Veronica is a doctor, with much of this feature detailing her work inside of a city hospital and the related stresses of trying to treat, and perhaps heal, psychologically suffering patients (some of whom abuse Veronica).

In the classic “physician heal thyself” mode, Veronica, too experiences existential angst and ponders the meaning of life, so she is often simpatico with her clientele. In this sense, Once Upon a Time, Veronica is reminiscent of European sixties cinema by Michelangelo Antonioni and Ingmar Bergman, with those estranged characters seeking purpose and connection. As developing countries undergo development, part of the process seems to incur these psychological crises that once seemed reserved for we denizens of the developed world, with our materialistic, consumer societies. One could find analogy to adding to global warming -- welcome to the monkey house!

Veronica finds release from her daily grind in carefree sex and water. Whether romping in the surf (alone or with friends or as part of an orgy) or in her shower, water is a recurring motif that provides our heroine with a form of hydrotherapy. Perhaps it can be argued that the sea in particular is what connects Veronica most to her Brazilian-ness.

As for her sexuality, Veronica confides that her problem isn’t having sex or finding partners, but rather discovering true love. So there’s a conflict as to whether Gustavo (Joao Miguel) will remain solely a sex partner, her boy toy -- or, on a more intimate level, become Veronica’s “official boyfriend.”

Perhaps this is because Veronica still lives with her ailing, aging father, Zé Maria (W. J. Solha) -- who loves frevo music and has a book by Lenin on his shelf -- with whom she has a very warm, nurturing relationship. Maybe she’s channeling those loving feelings into her father, instead of a romantic partner. (Paging Dr. Freud!)

Guedes’ performance always rings true. Her Veronica is not a classic beauty; rather, her attractiveness is derived from the character’s realistic earthiness. Veronica is physically (and mentally) poised somewhere between youth, which is fading, and the onset of early middle age; she’s apparently around 35 years old or so. Indeed, the film begins with Veronica sitting her medical exams, as she transitions from student to entering the workplace as a professional.

Veronica is busty, but beginning to sag -- you know, like a real woman, not a pre-fab Hollywood movie starlet. In a sense, sans (presumably) Botox, breast augmentation surgery and other artifice, we experience a natural instead of artificial woman, which makes her all the more sexier and endearing. Likewise some of Veronica’s gal pals -- one of whom is very overweight but not burdened by Melissa McCarthy-type fat girl jokes.

Gomes combines Neo-realist and more arty cinematic styles, with lots of close-ups. We get a real slice of life as it seems to be lived by 21^st century real residents of Recife. But a shot that lingers on Veronica’s grief stricken visage goes on far too long and one almost wants to shout “cut!” at the screen at this affectation.

Overall, Once Upon a Time, Veronica is a candid, absorbing film that sheds light on 21^st century Brazil through the life of a vibrant, bright woman full of longing, striving for hope -- and, perhaps, an insouciant state of grace that is joie de vivre. 

 

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FILM REVIEW: REACHING FOR THE MOON

Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloria Pires) in Reaching for the Moon.

Lunacy and love

By Ed Rampell

I really liked this movie, mainly because of its unusual characters based on actual historical figures. Directed by Brazilian Bruno Barreto, Reaching for the Moon is a biopic about the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto). The film focuses on the long lasting affair between Bishop and Lota de Macedo Soares (Gloria Pires). As breakthroughs in same sex marriage continue to make headlines, this tale of a lesbian romance that began back in 1951 is especially timely.

The script by Matthew Chapman, Julie Sayres and Carolino Kotscho, inspired by Carmen Oliveira’s novel, Rare and Commonplace Flowers, has what this critic considers to be a hallmark of good writing: Lots of twists and turns the viewer doesn’t see coming. Succeeding sequences serve to explain previous scenes. The film opens at Central Park, but soon Bishop is on the road to Rio de Janeiro, where events conspire to keep her there for decades as she encounters Soares.

No frail lotus blossom, Soares is arguably the biopic’s most interesting, original character, and throughout this two-hour feature your mystified reviewer continued to change his evolving opinion of her as Soares' character developed. On the one hand, Soares' is an out of the closet lesbian in the Catholic, Portuguese-influenced, patriarchal Brazil of the 1950s. On the other, she is a charter member of the ruling class, so despite her sexual preference she is used to getting her way. After all, if wealth is our international language, then money talks -- regardless of one’s sexual preference.

It’s interesting that Soares' lesbianism is not made much of in Brazil, nor is her ensuing affair with the far more repressed, secretive Bishop. This seems true both when they are at Soares' modernist refuge in the Amazon jungle or staying at her posh penthouse in Rio. There is lush, sumptuous cinematography by Mauro Pinheiro Jr. of the tropics, Copacabana Beach, Sugarloaf, etc., and the  degree of acceptance of the screen couple’s Sapphic sexuality and same sex relationship from the 1950s through the 1960s is indeed eye opening, especially considering how they most likely would have been treated in the staid U.S.A.

It’s interesting to note that currently another great American writer -- Glenn Greenwald, that fierce champion of civil liberties who brought Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA über-snooping to the world’s attention -- is an expat who has left America to live in Brazil with his male Brazilian lover. Perhaps Brazil is ahead of the supposedly “advanced” United States?

This critic has no idea how historically accurate this biopic is, but according to the movie Bishop chafes under the rule of the military junta that overthrows the democratically elected Brazilian government in 1964. As a charter member of the land owning elite Soares' position is different, and it’s interesting to see how political events shape the lovers’ lives.

Director Barreto helmed 1997’s fact-based Four Days in September, which starred Alan Arkin as a U.S. diplomat kidnapped by the MR-8 “terrorist” group, which supported armed resistance to Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship (which, BTW, tortured Brazil’s current President, Dilma Rousseff, a former Marxist guerrilla, who is currently fighting against the NSA surveillance of her, which Snowden revealed). Barreto also directed the popular 1976 erotic ghost comedy, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, and along with Otto attended the private screening for Reaching for the Moon. His pithy introductory remarks put his finger on Moon’s message, saying: “This is a love story.”

Indeed, straight, gay, trans or whutevah, love is what inspires the poet in all of us -- whether or not we’ve won Pulitzers -- and makes the world and moon go round. Reaching for the Moon is an absorbing, insightful psychological drama with political overtones which won an OutFest Audience Award and is one of the year’s best movies about the love.

 

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FILM REVIEW: THE CLOWN

A scene from The Clown.

Go with what you know

By Miranda Inganni

Brazil’s submission to the 85^th Academy Awards is a sweet and thoughtful, almost quiet film.  Unlike many Brazilian usually arriving on these shores -- i.e, City of God, Elite Squad, Manda Bala, -- there is no violence, no sex, no drugs, no gangs or guns here. The Clown (O Palhaço) tells the story of a clown comedy duo of father, Valdemar (Paulo José), and grown son, Benjamin (Mello), as they lead their travelling circus troupe to villages to entertain the locals.

Directed and co-written by Selton Mello, The Clown also stars Mello as Benjamin, a clown unsure of his identity, figuratively and literally (he has no social security number or proof of residence) and he cannot find anyone who makes him laugh. Feeling that his talents may lie outside of their Circus Esperanza (Circus of Hope), sad clown Benjamin sets off in search of another life.

Mello is an accomplished actor, writer and director and his performance in The Clown is understated and sincere. Additionally, he has surrounded himself with a superb cast, including José as his father and Larissa Manoela as the precociously tuned-in Guilhermina.

While the movie takes its time introducing the audience to the players and then resolves the film a little too abruptly at the end, the journey is worth taking with Benjamin and his friends.

 

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FILM REVIEW: LULA, SON OF BRAZIL

A scene from Lula, Son of Brazil.

Rise for the classes

By Ed Rampell

In the past few years a slew of biopics about recent European rightwing leaders have been released, including The Conquest (about Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to France’s presidency), The Iron Lady (with Meryl Streep as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), The Queen (about Queen Elizabeth and Britain’s sellout and warmonger, Prime Minister Tony Blair), as well as Il Caimano, which lampoons Italy’s buffoonish Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Now there’s a feature to cheer for about one of the good guys, as Fabio Barreto’s Lula, Son of Brazil joins Clint Eastwood’s ode to Nelson Mandela, Invictus, as a biopic about a left-leaning leader.

This stylish, stirring, poignant picture follows Luis Inacio Lula da Silva from his birth and humble origins in Brazilian hinterlands to his migration to the urban squalor of São Paolo’s favelas. Lula is real salt of the Earth, a man of the people, who during his childhood was a shoeshine boy and fruit peddler. His father is a ne’er-do-well who deserts the family, although his mother, Dona Lindu (Gloria Pires) is a loving, nurturing, encouraging pillar of strength. Several actors portray Lula from childhood to adulthood, and newcomer Rui Ricardo Diaz incarnates the grownup metal worker as he rises in the ranks of the trade union movement that challenges the factory bosses and Brazil’s military dictatorship. Like Mandela, Lula becomes a political prisoner (albeit for a far shorter time than his South African counterpart) who eventually became head of state.

Along the way, Lula endures personal tragedy and loss, as well as public struggles against the military regime. Sequences of factory strikes, occupations, rallies, demonstrations and government crackdowns are shot with cinematic verve and gusto by Gustavo Hadba, and reminded me of 1969’s Z, the Costa-Gavras classic about the Greek colonels’ coup that won the Best Foreign Film Oscar. However, Barreto and his cinematographer Hadba also have keen eyes for filmically rendered, often exquisite close-ups that bring viewers into the drama.

It is this balance of the political and the personal, in terms of film form and content, that makes Lula, Son of Brazil so gripping. The private family and romantic elements are organically linked to the mass drama – just as they are in real life, too. Like the moving father-son relationship in A Better Life, the mother-son relationship between Lula and Lindu is extremely touching, and of course emphasizes how parenting is the most important job in the world. This is one of the best silver screen depictions of a mother-son relationship set against a social backdrop since V.I. Pudovkin’s 1926 Soviet revolutionary silent masterpiece, Mother, based on Maxim Gorky’s novel.

The acting has a neo-realist flavor to it in the sense that a working class milieu is truthfully depicted, although most of the lead parts are played by professional actors. Diaz, an unknown, had theatre training; this turn in the title role of an epic is his first film role. In addition to Diaz and Pires, Cleo Pires as Lula’s first wife Lurdes and Sostenes Vidal as Ziza, the brother who is to the left of Lula, also excel. Cleo is the real life daughter of Gloria, a telenovela star who also acted in 1995’s O Quatrilho, an Oscar-nominated drama directed by Barreto.

Politically, Lula, Son of Brazil depicts its proletarian protagonist as an honest trade union militant who repeatedly asserts that he is not “a communist.” Lula was more or less a social democrat, and the successful Workers Party candidate for president in post-dictatorship Brazil ruled the country in that way. While he was part of the Bolivarian trend of left-leaning South American leaders portrayed in 2010’s great Oliver Stone documentary South of the Border, he is clearly not as radical as his counterparts in Cuba, Bolivia and Venezuela. However, after serving two terms in office he reportedly reduced poverty, left Brazil better off than he’d found it before becoming president, remained immensely popular, and handed the presidency off to a democratically elected woman and former guerrilla, Workers Party candidate Dilma Rousseff.

The movie’s final credits become propagandistic, with a hagiography of Lula consisting of titles telling boasting about his achievements and photos of him meeting with various world leaders. The transition from fiction to factual is jarring, and also strange, because the rest of the biopic has a far greater ring of truth. But this is a mere quibble; otherwise, Lula is a marvelous motion picture experience about a man and a movement that shook South America’s largest nation to its core. If you happen to love great movies, don’t miss Lula, Son of Brazil.  

  

                                                                   

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HOLLYWOOD BRAZILIAN 2011: BOLLYWOOD DREAM

A scene from Bollywood Dream.

Open up

By Don Simpson

Sofia (Nataly Cabanas), Ana (Paula Braun), Luna (Lorena Lobato) are unemployed Brazilian actresses with families whom they need to support. They travel to India to work in cinema...but, as far as airport customs knows, this trip is purely a spiritual journey. Upon arrival, Sofia, Ana and Luna discover that their hotel reservation has been cancelled; so they haggle the price of another hotel so low that it is difficult not to wonder if karma will come back to bite them.

The three Brazilian actresses are in search of a Bollywood producer, but he is not at the address listed on his business card. Not ones to give up very easily, they recruit a young dance instructor (Mohana Krishna) and an actress (Geetha Satish) to coach them until their big Bollywood break comes along. Sofia, Ana and Luna are prone to arguing and haggling and find themselves repeatedly clashing with Indian culture. Their difficult struggle to find their way commences, but their way does not follow the same meandering path as their destiny. No matter how hard they fight it, their destiny always prevails over their way. Maybe they should not have lied to airport customs after all -- perhaps this is a spiritual awakening?

Writer-director Beatriz Seigner’s Bollywood Dream is a colorful and musical meditation on three Brazilian women who find themselves far away from their native land. Seigner showcases the drastic cultural differences between Brazilians and Indians, but there does appear to be one similarity: the exploitation of women in the entertainment industry. It seems as though actresses are viewed as sexual objects even in Bollywood. What on earth would Radha have to say about that?

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HOLLYWOOD BRAZILIAN 2011: ROSA MORENA

Thomas (Anders W. Berthelsen) in Rosa Morena.

The kids of Brazil

By Miranda Inganni

Middle-aged, Danish and gay, Thomas (Anders W. Berthelsen) desperately wants a baby. Unfortunately, Danish law makes that quite difficult for him, so he heads to Brazil to see his old friend, Jakob (David Dencik), and his wife, Tereza (Vivianne Pasmanter). It's here that Thomas learns that when the legal route fails, there may be another way to secure a child.  

Maria (Bárbara Garcia), a beautiful Brazilian can't afford her unborn baby so she and Thomas enter into an agreement that should benefit everyone, but when human emotions, selfishness and an overly protective boyfriend, Denilson (Pablo Rodrigues), get involved, things get ugly.

Directed by Carlos Augusto de Oliveira, the Danish-Brazilian Rosa Morena teeters on the verge of being a sweet and touching film. Unfortunately, it's hard to feel much sympathy for Maria. She can't seem to quit the drink while carrying her child, nor does she show much maternal instinct for the rest of the children in her brood. And Thomas is quite clueless -- apparently losing himself in familial feelings while finding a fondness for females, all the while burning through his bank account.

Politically sensitive to the issue of "purchasing Third World babies", the closing night film for the Hollywood Brazilian Film Festival is a smart drama featuring fine acting.

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