Terra estrangeira
Brazil / Portugal,
1995, 100 min
Shown in 1996
CREDITS
- dir
-
Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas
- prod
-
Flavio Tambellini
- scr
-
Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas, Marcos Bernstein
- cam
-
Walter Carvalho
- editor
-
Walter Salles, Felipe Lacerda
- cast
-
Fernandá Torres, Fernando Alves Pinto, Laura Cardoso, Luis Melo, Alexandre Borges
- source
-
Videofilmes
-
COMMENTS
Daniela Thomas in person.
OTHER
Does “black-and-white urban-existential murder-intrigue love-story” sound piquantly noir enough for you? This superb drama of dislocated young Brazilians caught up in smugglers’ treachery is all that, with a certain stylized carioca languor and a depth of subtext that distinguish it from the predictable. Like bitter ghosts of Portugal’s past, an underclass tide of Brazilians, Angolans and others fleeing the disorder of the former colonies haunts present-day Lisbon. Two stories unfold in parallel: Alex is a waitress in Lisbon whose struggle to get by is compounded by bigotry toward Brazilians; her boyfriend, a jazz musician with a drug habit, runs contraband gems. Meanwhile, in Sao Paulo, young Paco finds himself on his own, and desperate, when his mother drops dead at the news that, in response to economic crisis, the government has seized all savings accounts and she has lost her hard-won savings. The fates of innocent young man and bruised woman come together when he’s drawn into the smuggling trade as a courier. Overriding this compelling mix of love, peril, expressive visuals and plaintive Brazilian music is the longing for home, the searching for a safe place in the world, the sorrow of a generation fleeing from nowhere to nowhere.
—Alicia Springer
FACTOID #80
The globetrotting thespian Anthony Quinn attended the 1969 San Francisco International Film Festival in support of the Opening Night film The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he played the half-drunk mayor of an Italian hamlet, protecting his town’s wine collection from German soldiers.
