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Antígona 442 A.C. (2021)
The hardest part of the fight is figuring out which side to fight on.
What are the limits of power? And of strength? More than 400 years before Christ, Athenian playwright Sophocles opposed two forms of law: the natural (inherent to all human beings and created by the gods) and the legal (promoted by kings and states). The first one is represented by Antigone, who claims the impossibility of abandoning her brother's body to the animals. As for the second there is Creon, king of Thebes, obsessed with maintaining stability and who does not admit anyone challenging his orders. Andréa Beltrão dives headfirst into this ancient dramaturgy and brings the power of this discussion to 21st century Brazil. She plays all the characters, narrates parallel mythological stories that help in understanding the characters and plot. A great work for those who love Greek theater.
Samba le grand (1979)
A narrative of feats and courage similar to the classic myths.
Stop motion animation that recounts a traditional African story: the adventures of Sambagana, a willing young man who goes to the world to conquer his own empire, but falls in love with Princess Analiatoubari on the way. He asks to marry her, but she demands a lot of impossible labours. He wins them them all, but at the last one the hero commits suicide. The princess goes to him, and orders her subjects to build him a monument as high as a mountain. Once it is completed, Analiatoubarise throws herself and the horse atop of the monument - only death could unite the two. Although it is a film with few technical resources, it brings the magic of West African culture and griots, the region's storytellers. It is a narrative of feats and courage similar to the classic myths.
Gaspard va au mariage (2017)
A collection of absurd situations that will lead to final redemption
The film begins with an absurd situation: a young woman shackles herself on the train tracks protesting against something that she does not even know what it is. On the train, a young man who goes to his father's wedding and, without knowing anything else, invites the young woman to pass by his girlfriend for the nest three days. Everything and everyone seems exotic: the sister, who uses a bear skin and stinks, the father, who enters a tank with fish to treat eczema; the house where they live, which looks like an abandoned warehouse. Oh, and they own a zoo. In this context of chaos, this family will be reunited, while the father is getting married (or not) and the zoo will be sold. There are no answres, just a collection of absurd situations, that lead to a final redemption.
Cícero Dias, o Compadre de Picasso (2016)
I saw the world, it begins in Recife
Documentary feature on the life and works of painter Cícero Dias, from Pernambuco, one of the most important names of Brazilian fine arts of the 20th century. He led a most enthralling life: was one of the most important modern brazilian painters, befriended with the most important brazilian intellectuality (such as Gilberto Freyre, Murilo Mendes, Manuel Bandeira) and with great painters in Paris (especially Picasso, godfather to his only daughter). Consular officer in Marseille, helped Jewish refugees during World War II. And despite all this, he never forgot his hometown, Recife, and his most famous work have the following title: I saw the world, it begins in Recife.
Cas (2016)
A cold relationship
I really could not develop empathy for those characters. Pepijn (Wieger Windhorst) asks his partner / husband / lover about his profile on Grindr ... does it mean they have an open relationship? They plan a child by a surrogate mother and a round the world trip at the same time, but Sjors (Kevin Hassing) just got a new job, apparently, which indicates that the couple lacked dialogue long before the arrival of Cas (Felix Meyer), which only made the situation worse. A cold relationship, which in my view, that didn't need a third party to end.
O Porteiro do Dia (2016)
This movie deals with various fetishes.
This movie deals with various fetishes. First of all, we have an out-of-the-closet, quite effeminate, gay man who not only desires an older, theoretically heterosexual, rough man but also "converts" him - to the point that this man bottoms during sex. There is, also, the fetish of sexual intercourse with employees, something relatively common in Brazilian gay culture. The film explores such desires and sets them against the background of the raw reality of a large city in the Brazilian Northeast, Recife, culturally rich but economically poor and socially uneven.
Nadie nos mira (2017)
Difference between the verb TO BE and the verbs SER / ESTAR.
I think that a single moment can define this film: when Nico has to teach an American the difference between the verbs "SER" (constancy) and "ESTAR" (mobility), something quite particular to both Spanish and Portuguese (my native idiom) languages: the new yorker realizes, and tells him right away, that his presence in the USA is merely provisional (he ESTÁ in New York), and that his true self É Buenos Aires. Everything else, the frustrated attempts to act in a film (which never materializes), his work as a nanny (the one he accepted and the some he rejected), the pathetic change in his hair color ... everything is an echo of that brief dialogue , which deals with the difference between the verb TO BE and the verbs SER / ESTAR.
Clash of the Titans (2010)
"Leave it there"
In one of the scenes of Clash of the Titans, Perseus finds the mechanical owl (one of the landmarks of the original film) and someone says to him: leave it there. Well, to me that's the absolute summary of this motion picture. The CGA is ugly, exaggerated and, worst of all, false. Only Pegasus is a little more convincing, but the scorpions, the djin, the Medusa (with dark breasts in contrast to the pale scales) are very bad. The film as a whole is a mixture of the Lord of the Rings (the clothes, the architecture, the light), with Gladiator (the leather skirts spinning while the soldiers fight) and, in the end, the Kraken that looks like Godzilla. Honestly, I could not see any value in the movie itself. As for Antiquity, not the least attention was paid to myths and how they were constructed: humans could not declare war on the gods (ridiculous), Hades was not perverse (a common modern artifice that owes nothing to the Greek world, which feared the god, but considered him fair. Films may add new elements to th e myths, but the structure of the narratives need to be respected. There is no respect for anything or anyone in those two hours of bad performances, bad script and bad visual effects. In other words, leave it there, it's not worth it.
El-Fallâh el-fasîh (1970)
A literary masterpiece from Antiquity taken to the big screen
The Eloquent Peasant is not a film for all tastes. It suits mostly those who are interested in the History of Antiquity and/or in "World Cinema". The film is inspired by a homonymous sapiencial tale, about a peasant who inflicts negligible damage to a landlord's property, and has his two donkeys taken. Effectively eloquent, he goes from authority to authority to defend his case, until he reaches the governor, who redeems and rewards him for his honesty.