Even though the rising number of Brazilian films in A-league film festivals indicates its unquestionable vitality, films we saw at the most recent Berlin Film Festival merely recycle social stereotypes



In the end credits of Zelito Viana’s film Bela Noite Para Voar, which describes an episode from the beloved Brazilian President Juscelino Kubitschek’s life and shows that women save the world, is a list of all the most important events from the politician’s mandate. So we discover that the production of oil in Brazil jumped from 6,8 to a hundred thousand barrels a day, which is a very interesting piece of information, given that one of the sponsors of this film is the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, which ordinarily has as much of an interest in the seventh art as the British Lottery. However, the dictator Getulio Vargas, one of the most hated Brazilian presidents, a man who wrote Christmas cards to Hitler and loved everything Kubitschek rejected, founded Petrobras. And even though Viana idealized Kubitschek as the ultimate sort of bon vivant who hangs out with Oscar Niemeyer, has affairs with beauties bathing in pink tubs and turns politics into a burlesque and politicians into comedians (the governor seems to be a clone of Groucho Marx), he is backed up by the powerful Hollywood corporation, Universal Studios. Moreover, he is not the only director represented in this program who counted on powerful Americans; Amorino’s The Middle of the World was co-produced by Buena Vista. In spite of that, Viana’s likeable but didactic and propagandistic film is a sort of an innocent parable of contemporary Brazil and its attempts to escape the IMF’s boot.



Even though the rising number of Brazilian films in A-league film festivals indicates its unquestionable vitality, the films we saw at the most recent Berlin Film Festival merely recycle social stereotypes about adolescent outsiders’ lives, street delinquents who dream of becoming soccer players, and of capoeira dancers (Os famosos o os duendes da morte, Besouro, Broder). The Venetian Mostra selected their very antithises, such as the hermetic Felipe Hirsch (Insolacao) or the pioneer of Brazilian experimental film Julio Bressane (A Erva do rato). The only film from our program that even comes near to addressing the social interests of the above mentioned films is the road film by Vincente Amorio The Middle of the World, which follows the long journey of a family on bikes from the remote town of Paraibe to Rio in search of a better life. The fact that the film focuses on a poor teenager openly courts the attention of the consumers of the more intelligent afternoon TV films for adolescents, which try to avoid Hollywood cliches. The religious and spiritual component of the film is reflected by the original title and confirms that the finish line of the family’s road to the sky is the famous statue of Christ on Corcovado, even though they have not yet experienced the real temptations of the City of God.

While Amorim’s film inherits the esthetics of neo-realism, Arreaso’s playful Lisbela and the Prisoner plays of the card of poetic realism as a typical product of the romantic comedy genre produced by the Globo TV corporation, which likes to package Brazilian stereotypes in shiny cellophane wrapper of local populist theatre. Sandra Werneck’s Possible Loves follows a similar erotic path; the hero Carlos, like Arreaso’s Lisbela, loves films and going to the movies. His three different “avatars” are in fact three variations of love and its dilemmas. The first is torn between a wife and a lover. The second is torn between an ex-wife and a gay lover. The third is torn between his mother and freedom. All three characters are portrayed by the same actor, Brazilian sex symbol Murilo Benicio. “Who do you love more, mother or Pedro?”, Carlos’s son asks him. In the time of Sao Paolo Gay Pride, this kind of childish curiosity is not utopian. Even so, maybe it is the Brazil Kubitschek dreamed about. (Dragan Rubeša)