Riscado (Craft) Screening at MoMA on Jan 13 and Jan 16, 2012

UPDATE:
Craft (2011) is screening on Friday, January 13, 2012, at 7:30 p.m. at MoMA in New York City., Director Gustavo Pizzi and lead actor, Karine Teles, will introduce the film. A second screening of the film takes place on Monday, January 16, at 4:30 p.m. (also at MoMA but without a Q&A with the director and actress).
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By Rodrigo Brandão

Part Mumblecore cinema, part character study, Gustavo Pizzi’s Craft (2010) is arguably, one of the most original films to come out of Brazil in 2011.

The film, which won the Best Actress award at last year’s Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, opens this year’s Premiere Brazil, scheduled to run from July 14 to 27, at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Now in its ninth edition, Premiere Brazil is an annual showcase of recent Brazilian cinema jointly organized by Jytte Jensen (Curator, Department of Film, MoMA) and Ilda Santiago (Director, the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival).

Headlined by Karine Telles, Craft (or Riscado, as the film is called in Brazil) follows the humbling, everyday routine of Biana (Teles), a struggling actress who pursues her passion for acting while working at an events promotion agency.

Fully dedicated to her craft, Bianca is currently enjoying the security of being past her twenties: she has found fulfillment in acting and is determined to nurture herself through this artistic pursuit. As she gracefully manages a life filled with expected economic sacrifices, she also begins to fear that her moment has come and gone, and quickly, this feeling becomes one of the film’s emotional cores. In that sense, Pizzi was lucky to have found an actress like Teles, whose gravitas comes so effortless, specially as she performs her character’s internal certainty about her place in the world layered over the constant fear of being discarded by it.

As it is often the case with most great works, one can read this film in a variety of ways – even as a capitalist critique! (Why should we accept meaningless jobs?)

But no matter how hard one looks, romance is nowhere to be found – either by refusal, desire or acceptance. For all we know, Bianca has no partner, boyfriend, or girlfriend, and she never expresses a desire to find such pleasures. Unfortunately, such a picture of female life is rarely found in Brazilian cinema, and it is utterly surprising that Pizzi and Teles mastered the absence of romantic love so perfectly.

At night, Bianca rehearses a production of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, soon to premiere at a small theater in her neighborhood. This is clearly a labor of love, but that’s alright; there is no room for resentment when one’s labor is so meaningful. During the day, our hero alternates between auditions and event gigs, impersonating Hollywood divas (Marilyn Monroe, Carmen Miranda, Betty Davis … ) at birthday parties, store openings and wherever there’s money to pay for her talents. Clearly, acting isn’t paying the bills.

While the agency jobs aren’t necessarily (or invariably) humiliating, they certainly require a great deal of verve, creativity, and even, stomach.

As an actress (and a serious one), Bianca has developed such skills – and a tough skin to match. But while the bulk of her agency jobs are somewhat harmless, harassment is always a step away. In one of her Marilyn Monroe birthday parties, her client asks: “Please, don’t get too close to my dad.” Bianca responds with matching force and clarity: “Don’t worry. I’m an actress, not a prostitute.” But truth is that her happy-go-lucky posturing (useful when parading in goofy costumes) insidiously ridicules her own art, and the mundane reality of her paying job is slowly unraveling her self confidence.

However, as it often happens in the movies, an encounter changes everything.

When Bianca auditions for a French-Brazilian film production, she ends up sharing some anecdotes of her life as a street impersonator with Thomas (Dany Roland), the French director searching for his film’s star. Eventually, Bianca hears the news that Thomas wants her to star in his new production, which will be based on her real-life struggles. Is this the chance she has been looking for? Will her mundane life turn into aesthetic texture for the world to see?

Shot in a variety of film and video formats (8mm, 16mm, HD…), Craft is beautifully filmed, and the mix media approach only enhances this unique female meta-narrative. Bianca is at a crossroads, starring at her own possible images, identities and future. And part of the film’s majestic sensitivity lies in watching Bianca watch herself, in a kind of narcissistic circuit comprised of viewers, cameras, self-images and desire. What kind of person is Bianca destined to become?

My only small “issue” with the film lies in its ending, which slightly veers off from the kind of subtle and thinly balanced emotions displayed throughout. One could call Craft‘s ending a bit predictable, and that is somewhat disappointing.

Screenwriters Pizzi and Teles (a real-life couple) managed the difficult task of creating a narrative film that exists in a narrow (and precious) emotional spectrum, never hitting an overly dramatic note, so the ending (although plausible), makes quite a noise.

Still, Craft is a wonderful and perfectly calibrated film that deserves to be seen by the major North American public. It also announces two major talents that, one can only hope, should stay where they are before moving to the more grandiose stages they so clearly deserve. Personally, I’d like to see more of this kind of intimate cinema coming from them.