Veredas: Bedouin

For these two thesps, the play is the thing—or rather the experimental film. They will play a pair of lovers in a variety of situations and contexts, but they will never have the time and conditions necessary to develop any sort of relationship arc. Playfulness and intentional artificiality trump narrative and character in Julio Bressane’s Bedouin, which screens tomorrow during the film series, Veredas: A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers.

“Bedouin” is maybe a bit older than “Surm,” but more problematically, he often projects an air of potential violence (that does indeed manifest itself from time to time). Nonetheless, the actors keep coming together to play problematic courtship scenes. Of course, we can plainly gather they are thespians from the behind-the-scenes prologue.

Bressane certainly has the experimental filmmaker’s contempt for convention, but he still clearly has a love of cinema. During various sequences, he evokes the look and vibe of Golden Age Hollywood, film noir, and the Nouvelle Vague, with the collaboration of cinematographers Pablo Baiao and Pepe Schettino. Admittedly, his visuals compositions are often could interesting to eyeball, which is fortunate, because they are largely the whole point of the film.

Instead of traditional acting, Alessandra Negrini and Fernando Eiras are more like malleable clay dolls for Bressane to mold and place in position as he sees fit. However, it must be conceded Negri can be remarkably expressive through the use of mere body language. With her chops, she could have worked steadily during the old-time silent movie era.

Veredas: Homing

Brazil is the home of churrasco steak houses, so it stands to reason any country that eats that much carne must have cowboys. You can find many of them in Minas Gerais (where they also make delicious cheese). Marcelo is a cowboy, who has always rode-herd over his boss’s cattle. Life will bring him to a crossroads in Helvecio Marins Jr.’s Homing, which screens during the film series, Veredas: A Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers.

Marins has always lived in rural Minas Gerais and he has no intention of giving up the cowboy life-style. He is just too attuned to the land and the animals, unlike his little sister, who moved to the big city. However, he has a dream of being a rodeo announcer (apparently, they are a lot like rappers in Brazil, maintaining a steady patter of rhymes laced with ribald braggadocio). It would seem like an odd ambition for the shy cowhand, but performing in front of his peers could help bring Marcelo out of his shell. Unfortunately, his plans will be threatened by crisis that strikes out of the blue.

Homing is a quiet, meditatively observant film that shares a kinship with documentaries like Sweetgrass. Marcelo Di Souza (who plays his namesake, like the rest of the neophyte ensemble) is clearly deeply familiar with this world. Nobody had to train him to ride a horse. Yet, it is still presumably fiction, given third act events, including the most artistically rendered, least action-oriented cattle rustling scene probably ever seen on-screen.

This is a film just about everyone will have respect and warm feelings for, even though it will probably lull half the audience to sleep. The love Marcelo and his sister share for each other is quite endearing and the profound Catholic faith of the rodeo cowboys is also quite poignant, but the simple truth is not a lot happens during its modest 85-minute running time.

Veredas: Necropolis Symphony

It is a fundamental law of cinema that any attempt to disturb the rest of the dead will lead to bad karma. It is also a fundamental real-life law of urban living that real estate is scarce, so any under-utilized plots should be scooped up and exploited. The conflict between these two laws leads to serious trouble for an apprentice grave-digger in Juliana Rojas’s Necropolis Symphony, which screens during the new film series, Veredas: a Generation of Brazilian Filmmakers.

Thanks to fleeting mortality, grave-digging is steady work, but poor Deodato probably isn’t cut out for it. His elevated capacity for empathy constantly overwhelms him at grave sites, causing him to pass out. The director hired him as a favor to his Uncle Jaca, a longtime cemetery employee, but he is losing patience. Fortunately for Deodato, the boss has a job requiring the full-time services of an employee, whose day-to-day productivity won’t be missed.

Deodato will assist Jaqueline, a hot-shot trouble-shooter from the Funerary Board, who will be re-organizing the layout of the storied old graveyard. They need more spaces to put bodies—bodies with funeral-paying survivors. Families behind on the upkeep of their plots will be encouraged to move their loved ones to a drawer in the prospective new mausoleum. Jaqueline does not want to say it in so many words, but remains that are forgotten and abandoned will probably just end up in a bag. Despite his hopeless schoolboy crush, this just doesn’t seem right to Deodato. He’s not the only one who feels that way.

By the way, Necropolis Symphony is also a musical, with supernatural elements. In fact, many of the musical-numbers are laugh-out loud funny for those who are somewhat familiar with Brazilian popular song of the last twenty-years or so. For the unhip, the blend of music, bittersweet romance, and the undead is still ridiculously charming (and the songs are still pretty catchy). Compared to Anna and the Apocalypse, Necropolis is much more low-key, but the two films would still make an appealing double feature.