Premiere Brazil! ’12: Songs

The Great American Songbook’s closest rival for addressing love and longing in rhymed couplets must be Brazilian popular song.  You do not have to understand Portuguese to get the message.  Brazilian documentarian Eduardo Coutinho explores how popular and personal songs shaped the memories of everyday people in the straightforwardly titled Songs (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 Premiere Brazil! continuing at MoMA.

The format could not be simpler.  Coutinho interviewed forty-two Brazilians, mostly from what could be called a working class background, about the role songs played in their lives.  Probably only two of the eighteen who made the final cut had any sort of prior professional performance experience.  After answering a series of questions, each will sing a song rife with meaning to them, completely a cappella. 

There is no question Déa Franco is a polished performer and a still vibrant screen presence.  A veteran of Ary Barroso’s talent shows, her showstopper ought to her a Buena Vista Social Club­-esque late career re/birth.  Barosso, perhaps best known for the song-suite “Watercolor of Brazil” featured in Disney’s Saludos Amigos, is one of a handful of musical legends who figure prominently in the memories of Songs’ subjects, along with Roberto Carlos and Jorge Ben. 

Under Coutinho’s coaxing, several “Miss Otis” moments are recalled the film.  When German expat Isabell Erdmann, the film’s other clear professional or semi-pro, tells of how she and another German friend were abruptly dumped by their Brazilian husband and lover respectively, Coutinho knowingly comments just how “Brazilian” that is.  Oddly though, the film’s emotional peak comes somewhat early when “Gilmar” shocks himself, tearing up at the memory of his seamstress mother singing “Esmeralda” as she worked.  It rather perfectly illustrates Coutinho’s point.

There is an unusual elegance to Coutinho’s Spartan approach, but the lack of accompaniment could prove limiting to the film’s appeal.  It is hard to see it taking off like the Buena Vista doc, even though it speaks directly to more universal experiences.  It also lacks the star power of established name on-camera participants to attract fests and distributors, so those interested had best see it when it screens during Premiere Brazil!  Recommended for fans of Brazilian music and unabashed sentimentalists, Songs screens this coming Wednesday (7/18) and next Sunday (7/22) at MoMA.

Premiere Brazil! ’12: Heleno

Adoring fans can be dangerous to your health.  You could have asked Brazilian football legend Heleno de Freitas about it, but that would have been a very one-sided conversation.  The one-two punch of syphilis and ether addiction might have directly ravaged his body and mind, but he was really undone by his inner demons.  As a result, there is much more tragedy than triumph in his real life sports story, dramatized in José Enrique Fonseca’s Heleno (trailer here), which screens this week during MoMA’s annual Premiere Brazil!

Before Pelé, there was de Freitas.  He really was a once in a generation player.  Yet he never appeared in a world cup match for Brazil.  First World War II preempted the Cup, then de Freitas’s erratic conduct essentially preempted himself.  When he was good, he was great, but he was never much of a team player.  Poor Alberto could attest to that.  Ostensibly de Freitas’s best friend and team-captain, the decent old chap is often the object of de Freitas’s back-handed contempt.

Initially, there are plenty of women coming and going in the diva-striker’s life, but he eventually settles on two: his wife Silvia, a respectable woman from a good family and Diamantina, the sultry big band vocalist.  Obviously, this is one too many—at least if asked either of the women.  Unfortunately, the bad seeds of his wild years have already been sown.  Though he is urged to get treatment, Heleno is too busy making a hash of his life, both personally and professionally.

Told in a series of flashbacks from his long, hopeless period of institutionalization, Heleno has to be one of the darkest, most pessimistic sports films in years.  Shot in a massively stylish black-and-white by cinematographer Walter Carvalho (arguably Brazil’s most preeminent), the film has a noir sensibility that is way more Lost Weekend than Pride of the Yankees.  A far cry from “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth,” Heleno comes to believe he is saddled with persistent bad luck, but everything is clearly his own fault.

Frankly, there is not a lot of on-the-field action, but when there is, it is hardly glorious.  Heleno is almost an anti-sports bio-pic, grimly depicting the consequences of groupie hook-ups and ether abuse.  It is not a pretty picture.  At least Heleno sounds great, featuring several era-appropriate big band numbers and a licensed Billie Holiday song (Ellington’s “Solitude”).

As Diamantina, Colombian actress Angie Cepeda seems pretty credible behind the microphone and she (or whoever it is) sounds quite pleasing on the soundtrack.  Strangely though, she looks like she could be the sister of Alinne Moraes’s Silvia, which makes the love triangle harder to keep straight.  However, 300’s Rodrigo Santoro is undeniably the main event, falling apart spectacularly as de Freitas.  It is big, fiery performance, marked explosive rage and a painfully slow psychotic break from the outside world.  As a cautionary turn, it certainly ought to scare kids away from the ether bottle.

Featuring bravura work from Santoro in front of the camera and Carvalho behind it, Heleno is a striking period production and an uncompromising depiction of self-destructive behavior and mental illness.  Though de Freitas might not have Pelé’s name recognition, the Brazilian football (soccer) angle ought to guarantee it a devoted cult audience during festival play.  Recommended for those who enjoy a sophisticated 1940’s vibe and appreciate a classically tragic fall from grace, Heleno screens again this Wednesday (7/18) in New York, as part of MoMA’s 2012 Premiere Brazil!

Premiere Brazil! ’12: I’d Receive the Worst News from Your Beautiful Lips

Cheating with a minister’s wife is like asking for divine payback.  The preacher might be a bit of an environmental rabble-rouser, but the other man is still in for a heap of trouble, albeit of a decidedly worldly variety, in Beto Brant & Renato Ciasca’s I’d Receive the Worst News from Your Beautiful Lips (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 Premiere Brazil!, now running at MoMA.

In provincial Amazonia, there is not much to do besides clear-cutting rainforest and having illicit affairs.  Two hot-blooded outsiders like Cauby and Lavinia are better suited to the latter.  He is a photographer wandering the region, picking up freelance gigs taking mug-shots and snooping through keyholes for the local scandal sheet.  She is the wife of tree-hugging Christian Ernani.  Though she desires her fevered assignations with the increasingly obsessed Cauby, she still feels affection and a debt of gratitude to her ardent but somewhat older husband.  Secrecy is therefore important, but there is nothing harder to maintain in a small town.

Lips (if ever a title merited abbreviation, if would be Brant and Ciasca’s adaptation of Marçal Aquino’s novel) changes genres faster than the Amazonian weather turns.  It starts out like a Brazilian Red Shoe Diary, segues into a Body Heat noir thriller, finally ending with melodrama worthy of a telenovela.  It is actually reasonably competent observing the conventions of all three, but only truly masters the softcore eroticism of the first act.

Indeed, Lips is definitely a film for those who appreciate a relatively classy looking love scene.  However, the sympathetic portrayal of the Evangelical Ernani is a pleasant surprise, regardless of his outspokenly green sermons.  There is nothing hypocritical or unseemly about him.  In fact, he emerges as an almost saintly figure in the film’s distracting flashback scenes.

As Cauby and Lavinia, Gustavo Machado and Camila Pitanga are perfectly credible throwing themselves at each other and are more or less passable as the film progresses into darker territory.  Arguably, ZéCarlos Machado’s work as Ernani is the film’s most nuanced and intriguing, but there are also several small but colorful supporting performances that give Lips character.

Of course, setting looms large in Lips.  Viewers can just feel the humid sultriness as Cauby and  Lavinia commune with nature or prowl through their nocturnal world.  Cinematographer Lula Araújo gives it all a silky sheen appropriate to the over-the-top on-screen passion.  While Lips’ final act is an extended let down, the entire film is certainly evocative and never really dull.   A visually appealing production, Lips should fit the bill for those who enjoy steamy cinema with a veneer of art-house sophistication.  Obviously not for general audiences, Lips screens tomorrow (7/15) and Tuesday, July 24^th, as this year’s Premiere Brazil! continues at MoMA.  Viewer discretion is advised.

Premiere Brazil ’12: Matraga

Those who know their Brazilian cinema and literature will know Augusto Esteves, a.k.a. Matraga, is one bad cat.  The protagonist of João Guimarães Rosa’s short story, adapted for the screen in 1965 by Roberto Santos, made a triumphant return, sweeping most of the prizes at the 2011 Rio International Film Festival, proving Brazilians appreciate a rugged convert.  Once again, he sees the light in Vinícius Coimbra’s Matraga (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2012 edition of Premiere Brazil!, now underway at MoMA.

Better at drinking and whoring than farming, Esteves has made his share of enemies, most definitely including Major Consilva.  Eleven of the local land baron’s gunslingers got the jump on him out in the wild grasslands.  It was a decent idea, but they did not bring enough men.  They will learn from this mistake.  Using the incident as a pretext to banish his wife and child, Esteves continues his reckless hedonism, pressing his luck.  Beaten and branded, Esteves is left for dead after pitching head first into rocky gorge.  However, a devout elderly couple nurses his broken body back to health and puts his spirit on the path of righteous.

Though sometimes tempted to give into his inner demons, Esteves holds to the Christian faith of his adopted parents, living with them in anonymous isolation.  Eventually, the powerful landlord Joaozinho Bem-Bem and his extra-legal posse of enforcers ride into Esteves’ village, like a Brazilian John Tunstall and the Regulators, hoping to skirt a company of legitimate government troops.  Much to their surprise, Matraga receives them in the spirit of Christian hospitality, welcoming them into his home.  Recognizing a kindred spirit beneath Esteves’ pious exterior, Bem-Bem feels an instant rapport with the reformed killer.  Indeed, their fates will be intertwined.

Matraga is often billed as a Brazilian spaghetti western and that is fair to an extent.  Yet, Esteves is as much Paul on the Road to Damascus as the Man with No Name.  In truth, it is quite a solid film, but it will be tricky finding the right audience for it beyond Brazilian cinema showcases, such as MoMA’s Premiere.  This is a brooding film that treats issues of faith with deadly seriousness.  Still, when its go time, everyone gets down to business as the bullets fly.

Glowering impressively, João is convincingly fierce and conflicted as Esteves.  He handles the fight scenes quite credibly, but most importantly his depiction of the character’s hard won new faith is grittily realistic and in no way caricatured.  Nonetheless, José Wilker earns most of the film’s style points as the smoothly lethal Bem-Bem.

Clearly, Coimbra and cinematographer Lula Carvalho were taken with the wide open vistas of the Minais Gerais countryside, giving it the full John Ford treatment.  Yet, what is most notable is the manner the film stays true to the expectations of the western genre and the integrity of Esteves’ post-conversion character.  That is quite a trick.  Partly a moody, unhurried art film and partly a violent western shootout, is recommended fairly strongly for patrons of Brazilian cinema and those drawn to dark morality tales when it screens this coming Tuesday (7/17) and the following Sunday (7/22) as part of the tenth annual Premiere Brazil! at MoMA.

Premiere Brazil! ’12: Dirty Hearts

Brazil was the only Latin American country to commit troops to the Allied cause during World War II, but the country’s early strategic alignment was decidedly slippery.  However, they evidently prosecuted the war quite zealously after the armistice.  As home to the largest expatriate Japanese community, Brazil outlawed the Japanese language, the public display of the Japanese flag, and the free assemblage of Japanese-Brazilians.  Ironically, this would isolate the targeted enclaves, making them susceptible to extremist groups that refused to accept Japan’s defeat.  A decent man loses his soul to those Shindo Renmei nationalists in Vincete Amorim’s Dirty Hearts (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Premiere Brazil! showcase at the Museum of Modern Art.

Most Japanese immigrants in post-war Brazil only speak Japanese.  Already shunned by the Brazilian establishment, they have little need of Portuguese within their cooperative.  Ekemi, the young daughter of the cooperative president is an exception.  She often translates for Takahashi, the mild mannered portrait photographer.  Takahashi is a simple man devoted to his wife Miyuki, but his lack of confidence makes him vulnerable to the venom of Colonel Watanabe, a retired Imperial officer and big wheel amongst the community.

According to Watanabe, anyone who believes Japan has surrendered and the emperor has renounced his divinity has willfully bought into Allied propaganda and must therefore have a “dirty heart.”  The characters for that ominous epithet start to appear on the walls of Portuguese speaking Japanese, serving as none too subtle death threats.  Perhaps because of his size, Watanabe taps the reluctant but impressionable Takahashi to be their lead hatchet man.  Assassinating former friends, Takahashi jeopardizes his wife’s love, the affection of Akemi, and his sense of honor.

Regardless of what we have seen in samurai films (like for instance 13 Assassins, in which lead actor Tsuyoshi Ihara also appears), it is rather hard work killing someone with a sword.  Dirty features some of the ugliest, messiest, least glamorous swordplay viewers are likely to see on film.  This is an anti-war film after all, positing ideology as the real killer.

Ihara’s portrayal of the guilt-ridden Takahashi is viscerally intense, yet the film’s most memorable work comes from young Celine Fukumoto.  Her earnest but utterly natural performance makes Akemi a worthy successor to Scout Finch in the annals of youthful cinematic consciences.  Likewise, Tokako Tokiwa is quite arresting as the increasingly horrified Miyuki.  The Portuguese-Brazilians are rather few and far between in Dirty, but fans might recognize Eduardo Moscovis (who went crazy rather nicely in The Last Madness) as the local ineffectual lawman.

Frankly, Dirty largely lets the Brazilian authorities off the hook, despite creating the conditions that gave first rise to the Shindo Renmei movement and then allowing them to tear the Japanese immigrant community apart.  Granted, Amorim employs plenty of emotional manipulation, but he illustrates the danger of extremist group-think quite effectively. 

Often riveting but also eye-opening, Dirty Hearts is strongly recommended when it screens this Friday (7/13) and Monday the 23^rd as part of MoMA’s Premiere Brazil, the only game in town for Brazilian cinema after Petrobras unceremoniously withdrew the funding for Inffinito’s New York Cine Fest.  (FYI: New York taxpayers, that would be the same Petrobras that potentially stands to receive controversial U.S. Export-Import Bank loans and continues to fund the London Cine Fest.)