Cidade baixa
Brazil,
2005, 100 min
Shown in 2006
CREDITS
- dir
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Sérgio Machado
- prod
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Mauricio Andrade Ramos, Walter Salles
- scr
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Sérgio Machado, Karim Ainouz
- cam
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Toca Seabra
- editor
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Isabela Monteiro de Castro
- mus
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Carlinhos Brown, Beto Villares
- cast
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Alice Braga, Lázaro Ramos, Wagner Moura, José Dumont
- source
-
Ed Arentz, Palm Pictures, 76 Ninth Ave, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10010. FAX: 212-320-3709. EMAIL: ed.arentz@palmpictures.com.
-
COMMENTS
Alice Braga in attendance.
OTHER
Jules and Jim might not speak Portuguese, but they’d have no problem understanding the dilemma faced by Deco (Lázaro Ramos) and Naldinho (Wagner Moura), lifelong buddies whose friendship and sanity are dangerously tested by their mutual love—and lust—for hot-to-trot prostitute Karina in this sultry Brazilian romance that’s anything but a carnivale for its three hapless antiheroes. The guys prowl the waterfront of Salvador, the “lower city” populated by hustlers, hookers and barking dogs, barely getting by on botched robberies and fixed boxing matches and befriending, then bedding, beautiful Karina. For a while the threesome enjoys an anything-goes fling until possessiveness, jealousy, knives and pregnancy upset the relationship’s tenuous balance. The film’s themes of strutting machismo and racial unrest—established early on in a metaphor-laden cockfighting scene pitting black bird against white—and director Machado’s incisive deconstruction of the virgin/whore dichotomy (embodied by Alice Braga in a physically and emotionally naked tour de force performance as Karina) are deftly highlighted through verité-style cinematography and a tragic plot that offers little hope of happiness for its sexy yet sad protagonists. In a “lower city” bereft of options, Deco, Naldinho and Karina desperately seek transcendence and—in a devastating final scene consisting entirely of closeups of intimately expressive eyes—see right through the melodrama of their sordid surroundings. Holding on to dignity even as their passions strip away loyalty, common sense and aesthetic artifice, our trio of lovers, losers and fighters yearns for bossa nova melodies in a city that won’t let them enjoy their dance for long.
—Steven Jenkins
FACTOID #300
When she attended the 1980 San Francisco International Film Festival for a tribute, Federico Fellini’s wife and muse Giulietta Masina, admitted that she accepted a bit part in the American film The Madwoman of Chaillot (despite the fact that she could not speak English) just so she could get costar Katherine Hepburn’s autograph.
