Social realism in Brazilian film fest

Coming on the heels of all the big film festivals held in our country this September (Cine Europa, Sineng Pambansa, CineFilipino) is the Brazilian Film Festival, which will be held for the next two Fridays (started last Sept. 27, with an opening on Sept. 26, in time for the Brazil Day) at the UP Film Institute. Unlike the 3 festivals mentioned, the latter festival came on a rather quiet note, not having much publicity and fanfare. This doesn't mean, however, that the films are of less impact. Quite the contrary. The 3 films shown on the festival's first week were notable, as this film junkie observed, for their social realist concerns, which has always been associated with Brazilian cinema or, for that matter, with Latin American cinema (films from Mexico, Cuba and Argentina). 

Let's take a look: 

"Carandiru" by Hector Babenco 

The festival couldn't have started more with a bang than with Hector Babenco's gritty, powerful and immersive prison drama. Coming from the guy who made the equally bleak "Pixote", what makes the film all the more so is how the filmmaker presents the prisoners and their conditions inside the cell (their "sub-culture", so to speak) without a bit of sentimentality and judgment. Clocking in at 2 1/2 hours, watching the film is like reading several short stories compiled in one volume, as we get to encounter, in an episodic manner, certain individuals in the prison - their mental, emotional and physical states, the crimes that led to their being locked up, their way of life inside the prison. (The only other few times where I got to feel like I was reading one good novel while watching were with Edward Yang's "Yi yi", Lars von Trier's "Breaking the Waves" and Bela Tarr's "Satantango".) What's amazing is that, given the sordid and rough details of the inmates' lives, with the film's masterful direction and writing (based on the memoirs of Drauzio Varella, the prison doctor), the prisoners come across as fully-rounded humans, instead of some caricatures or stereotypes. There may be a bit of "archetype" in their characters (the newbie, the junkie, the hardened, the cynic, the sociopath, the drag, the psycho, the cheerful, the master, etc.), but altogether the viewers get to care for them. Such rich humanity becomes the perfect round-up and set-up for the harrowing tragedy that will figure out later in the film. "Carandiru" was one of the films in competition in the 2003 Cannes International Film Festival and it is perhaps interesting to note how the film compares to the Palme d'Or-winner of that year, Gus van Sant's "Elephant". Both films were based on a real-life tragic incident;both were almost exclusively set in one location (an ordinary highschool in America in the latter and the then-largest state prison in Brazil in the former);both encompassed certain seemingly ordinary individuals who would later figure in the films' culminating tragedies;and both of the culminating tragedies were characterized by a reckless shooting spree. While there is an ambient sense of dread throughout in Van Sant's film, Babenco's has this sweaty and sticky feel that all the more enhances its equally downbeat coda. While a glimmer of hope  may be totally absent from Van Sant's work, there may be some to be felt in Babenco's in the person of the doctor himself (portrayed with amiable reserve by Luiz Carlos Vasconselos) who, armed with his medical equipment and white garb, is like an archangel sent on a mission from above to a sordid pit. 

"The Twelve Labours" (Os 12 Trabalhos) by Ricardo Elias 

From the detainees of "Carandiru", we now come to a juvenile delinquent who is given a new lease on life, after serving time in a detention center in Ricardo Elias' "The Twelve Labours". The teenage Heracles' story in the film is in fact a modern-day re-telling of the myth of the "12 Labours" undergone by the Greek god Heracles (or Hercules), as a way of atoning for a horrible crime he did in the past. This gives an innovative spin to a delinquency tale that we have already encountered in the cinema before (Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows", Maurice Pialat's "The Naked Childhood", Andre Techine's "Wild Reeds", Babenco's "Pixote", Karl Markovic's "Breathing", the Dardenne brothers' "Rosetta", to name some). This film junkie was actually counting, as I was watching, the number of "labors" that the young man (working as a motorcycle delivery boy) was tasked to do in the film. Given the banality and the seeming simplicity of the "labors" - where in each, the boy gets to briefly encounter different characters in various predicaments and situations - one may be tempted to search for some "mythical" dimensions in them, as can be seen in the Greek myth which serves as the film's springboard. The spirit of the movie is actually more in keeping with Neo-Realism (the life of a worker and the streetscape), its plot dynamics more of a nod to Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" (albeit less cynical;there's even a scene where Heracles does a Travis Bickle) and, with its concluding frame, does an homage to "The 400 Blows"' Antoine Doinel. "The Twelve Labours"' light atmosphere may just be right, for it warmed us up to the film that was to follow. 

"Angels of the Sun" (Anjos do Sol) by Rudi Lagemann 

Child prostitution is such a sensitive subject to be tackled on film. In the hands of a lesser director, such a subject may become needlessly romanticized or over-simplified. Thankfully, the film's director, Rudi Lagemann, presents the subject in an utterly unromanticized and unglamorous fashion, yet not without compassion and sensitivity, that the result is one big punch to the viewers' stomachs. Each of the film's scenario pierces through the guts that one can practically smell its environs. We thought that the story would be marred by cliches, but it really defies our expectations in many ways. We thought that the cocky girl would be the major pain in the neck of the pimp;that the badass pimp would eventually get his comeuppance;that the young Maria (sadly portrayed by Fernanda Carvalho) would eventually be hardened as she goes deep into the ropes of her trade;that it would be the start of a better life when she finally escapes from the hell-hole. But then, we only thought so. The girl's grim fate even takes on a surreal level as her plight is mostly situated in a far-flung jungle community, where everyone appears to have a sinister agenda and where the only pastime seems to be when the flesh makes its call (aside from the occasional soccer match). On the outset, "Angels of the Sun" looks like a nod to Louis Malle's "Pretty Baby". But whereas there seems to be a bright future awaiting the little heroine (played by a very young Brooke Shields) in Malle's film, all hope appears to be lost for Maria in Lagemann's. Nothing could be more heartbreaking than to see the fallen angel, scantily clad, asking for a safe ride from an endless parade of vehicles on a long highway, from sunrise to sundown. And when someone finally offers his hand for a lift, the child's destination appears to be sealed already. After the film, the viewers come out of the theater as much scarred as Maria. 

(This coming Friday, Oct. 4, the Brazilian films to be shown are "Alice's House" and "My Name Ain't Johnny".)