Premiere Brazil 2010 at MoMA – Five Highlighted Films

By Rodrigo Brandão

If there are lingering questions about the maturity and aesthetic inventiveness of recent Brazilian cinema, this year´s Premiere Brazil, a joint production between MoMA and The Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, should work as a final and resounding answer.

In what appears to be the strongest selection of recent Brazilian films to screen in New York City since the early 90s,  – or at least, since Brazil´s new wave of  film production (or as we call it, the  “Retomada”) – this year´s festival features both documentary and fiction films for all tastes and formats.

But arguably, one phenomenon that makes these specific films especially unique is the way in which these works inject new inflections and perspectives on customary Brazilian themes, such as urban violence, economic disparity, and the local struggle to integrate Brazil´s globalized façade with its destitute majority.

But most importantly, films like The Tenants (Os Inquilinos), Waste Land, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (É Proibido Fumar), and I Travel because I Have To, I Come Back because I Love You, showcase the work of incredibly talented and uncompromising filmmakers who are rediscovering (and creating) a new and multi-faceted vision of 21^st-century Brazil.

Marat Descartes in The Tenants

Perhaps the film that best exemplifies these filmmakers´capacity to reinterpret some of the country´s most pressing issues is Sergio Bianchi´s The Tenants (On Inquilinos), a film that tackles the issue of urban violence from the point of view of a working class family.

This family´s arduous and uphill battle to hold itself against middle-class ideals of social mobility and continuity is a brilliant addition to the canon of Brazilian films dealing with the effects of crime on the lives of “well mannered citizens.”

Valter (played by Marat Descartes) works a full time shift and goes to school at night – if not to get a better life for himself, but at least to set “the right example to his kids.” But this narrative of steady social enhancement quickly finds its counterpoint, when three loud, sexually active, testosterone-filled and ethically compromised men crash at the house next door and decide to live there for an unforeseeable time.

Ana Carbatti (left) in The Tenants

As they bring havoc to this otherwise calm neighborhood (and mistreat their landlord as well as other guests), the question of how to reclaim territorial control (and assert one´s masculinity) without resorting to violence becomes paramount to the future of  Valter´s family. And as the film´s lead characters oscillate between isolation and paranoia, their spectator-based mode of engagement with the outside world reflect a larger, global split between the violence of those with power and the passivity of the ones who comprise all visible social narratives.

With stunning performances by its leading actors Descartes and Ana Carbatti, who plays the vigilant mother of the family, The Tenants is a tour-de-force of cinematic tension. The film is filled with off-screen suspense, gorgeously composed shots, and frame-within-frame schematics, much like your favorite Michael Haneke film.

But while both Haneke and Bianchi have taken the unusual turn of placing socially responsible and picture-perfect families under an uncomfortable microscope, Bianchi is entirely unconcerned with guilt – or like Haneke, with the possible connections between the individual´s psyche and social malaise.

Ana Carbatti´s character spies into her next door neighbor in The Tenants (2009)

Therefore, the questions explored in The Tenants are in a strange way, deprived of ethical considerations. How can anybody successfully intervene against violence? How can we manage to live as desiring individuals in a plural, mobile and democratic society without fantasizing about our collective spaces?

The somewhat alienated but always desire-driven urban individual is at the heart of Anna Muylaert´s Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (É Proibido Fumar), a hilariously creepy and heart-breaking comedy about a woman named Baby (Glória Pires) and her love affair with a sloppy, bachelor neighbor called Max (Paulo Miklos).

Baby, a guitar instructor and compulsive smoker, goes through the usual big-city, self-transformation ritual when her soon-to-be-future husband appears displeased with her chain-smoking habit.

Glória Pires and Paulo Miklos in Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (2010)

This sudden morphing into a better person (through a hilarious behavioral tag line) also leads Baby to stop fighting against her sisters about her aunt´s couch and “start a new phase” in life.

While this new romantic relationship appears to be making Baby a much more hopeful and well-adjusted human being, the exact opposite takes place when she realizes that Max is sleeping with his ex wife – also a consummate smoker – behind her back.

More of a character piece than The Tenats, Some Gets In Your Eyes gives the opportunity for its leading actors Pires and Miklos, to display their brilliant comedic timing and their subtle (but always sharp) emotional range. But what distinguishes Muylaert´s latest from other character pieces in Brazil is the film´s unwavering (and clear-minded) commitment to the desperate loneliness, pesky humanity, and murky self-awareness of its leading characters. This film is a must-see for anyone looking for an intelligent, accessible and intuitively contemporary Brazilian comedy.

Loneliness is nowhere to be found in the documentary Dzi Croquette, a high-gears and revealing exposé on the eponymous Brazilian dance-theater group at the heart of the 1960s Tropicália cultural movement.

Dzi Croquette

Mostly composed of gay and bisexual men, Dzi Croquette was born during the most oppressive period of Brazil´s military dictatorships. And yet, the group´s hilarious, polyglot, highly sexual and unapologetically androgynous performances quickly became one of the most popular theater tickets in Brazil in the late 1960s, also becoming famous in the international scene years after.

When continual state oppression took them to Europe in the early 1970s, the members of Dzi Croquette became friends with the likes of Liza Minelli (featured in the doc), Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Béjart, replacing Josephine Baker after her on-stage death (at her own request) at one of Paris´ most important performance spaces.

Dzi Croquette

The group came to an end when its leader and creator, Lennie Dale, suddenly left the group. But the archival footage that remains and is included on the film, is jaw-dropping enough for anyone to know that the members of Dzi Croquette were both staggering talents and ahead of their time.

I Travel because I Have To, I Come Back because I Love You, by the already celebrated filmmakers Karim Ainouz and Marcelo Gomes, is a lyrical, first person travelogue narrated by a geologist sent to an isolated region in the Northeast of Brazil to survey water sources. The film, which is split day by day, mixes the leading character´s technical notes and land measurements with sketches of love letters and personal (therefore subjective) impressions about the places he visits.

Certainly the most ambitious narrative in the festival, I Travel because I Have To, I Come Back because I Love You is also one of the most poetic and artistically accomplished feature films produced in Brazil in the last decade. Its ambitious stylistic drifting (from poetic fiction to documentary and essay filmmaking) displays the kind of cinematic confidence that is still a rarity in Brazilian cinema.

I Travel Because I have to ...

And when the film switches from a shot of a mattress laying on the arid Northeast sun, to a riveting montage of workers at a cotton mattress factory and then, to a head-on interview with Patricia, a local sex worker, the film´s hybrid form seems like an appropriate (and much needed) response to the filmmakers´ rich canvas.

The last film I´d like to highlight in this non-comprehensive overview of this year´s Premiere Brazil is Maya Da-Rin´s Terras, an incredibly sophisticated documentary about life in the triple border between Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

The film features extensive interviews with unidentified local characters, such as a native indian and a local taxi driver, letting them talk freely –and at their own environments. Da-Rin´s camera also drifts through streets, neighborhoods and windows, capturing overlaying sounds and images that thread together the film´s storytelling while also capturing the region´s unique human transit.