Better Late Then Never

Am I Missing Something?

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Narrative is the soul of a film, isn't it? Even when that near evidence is contested by the filmmaker, we seem to want to find a story wherever. Is that hardwired in our imagination? is it a cultural acquisition? It's meaningless. We do find stories, and that is important if we want to understand where most of our art comes from.Cinema is, so far, the ultimate narrative medium, the one where the deepest transformations have been invested, in terms of storytelling, narrative invention, etc. That's because cinema is a conglomerate of other activities, with millenniums of existence, plus the power of moving image, something always wished, but never achieved until cinema appeared (some cave paintings already tried to replicate movement!).So, if you are serious in seeing films, and understanding the medium, you have to wonder about how the story of storytelling evolved. Some names are fundamental. Others not so much. Jorge Furtado is one of this latest. He's is relatively unknown outside Brazil, but I do think that anyone should be exposed to his work. He is one of the most clever film writers ever. I mean ever. More than 20 years ago, while still not making features, Furtado created a memorable short piece, Ilha das Flores. There he picked up on something Welles had been doing in the 70', and thinking about it since the 50'. What has been commonly known as "film-essay" is where Furtado left advertising and entered cinema. And he hasn't left that world ever since, having written golden pages and pushed the medium a huge leap ahead. That's how much I admire his work, how much i take him into consideration. This film is another exercise in narrative layering, narrative stance, and self-reference. All in one. We start with a regular story, here about a supposed murder. This story is already filled of versions, which we get to know as the film develops. The uncle's version is full of gaps, and we get successive evolutions to the initial statement "I killed a guy". Than, Furtado centers the film on a character, stranger to this main storyline that we pitched. We hear the inner voice of that character. He'll be our designated detective, our surrogate on-screen. But that voice never narrates what we see. Instead it comments on what we see, intersecting it and mixing it with outside references, filmic or not. A voice that comments on the main story and its characters. So that's 2 layers now, one of them purely self-referential. Add to it the story of this narrator character, something to do with teenage (mis)adventures and love stories. Now it's a third story, a third layer, which will punctually intersect the first one, and even overlap it from a certain moment on. The second layer, that of the inner voice, is all around, soaking the other two and how we watch the film.**spoilers** The convincing ending (from a cinematic point of view) comes out of the successful overlapping of all the layers, to allow for a funny (from genre's point of view) conclusion, which is itself highly self-referential: what gives away the whole plot is a set of photographs, who reveal both Kid and Soraia. Those photographs, documenting an event we never actually see except by glimpses, given to us after the conclusion, have an order that matters and tells a story, a 4th narrative layer that concludes the other 2. There's a funny side play with the photos, that tell a different story when its order is changed, thus helping the uncle to maintain his status as an idiot. As a film, for what it means, this is pretty superficial, even meaningless. Funny and juicy, but not deep. As cinematic exercise in narrative layering, this is truly powerful, as anything conceived by Furtado.My opinion: 4/5

Even if 99,99% of people that has seen this movie is Brazilian, I'll keep up with the English since it is the language of this website.This movie is a piece of cr*p. Worst acting I have seen for a loooong time. The kids are terrible. Specially the boy. This was the first time I saw someone with less facial expression than Arnold Schwarzenegger, and one single voice tone, like a 5 years-old kid reading in front of the class. How can someone so bad be the main actor of a movie ? The storyline is so shallow my daughter could have done better (she is 3 yrs old). It is so simple it could be written in a napkin and told in 3 minutes.There are only three possibilities for someone enjoy this movie: 1) you are a pre-teen; 2) you have been so brainwashed by Globo's stupidities that you think that anything that has the Globo's seal is awesome; 3) you have a serious brain damage.Avoid at all costs ! A shame to the Brazilian movie scene.

Another witty, romantic, funny, lightweight teen-oriented film directed and written by Jorge Furtado, combining love triangles, comedy, adventure and social commentary, and featuring his great ear for dialog (he's the smartest comedy writer working in Brazilian cinema today). Here, Furtado once again explores his trade-mark ersatz Cartesian logic construction of the narrative (which he's been developing since his famous, ground-breaking 1989 short "Ilha das Flores"): he makes ordinary stories look fresh by refusing linearity and taking time to consider the "what if" factor; his plots develop in bifurcations, they take side roads. When it seems we're lost in a maze, he throws us Ariadne's thread to a safe exit (his non-corny, unaffected happy-endings) -- but we don't feel fooled, we follow him with a smile.The cast is firmly lead by teenagers Darlan Cunha (his nonchalant, minimal acting is perfect for the part) and Sophia Reis (lovely without being "cute"), with Deborah Secco looking very sexy and overrated Lázaro Ramos doing what he does best: comedy. There's a lull in the final act, with too many songs commenting the action and plot holes that require a considerable suspension of disbelief, but the pace and editing are so swift and the mood so joyful that by then we're bought. This is Brazilian commercial cinema at its best: sunny, funny, smart, unpretentious, well-made.

This movie is very nice-looking and very good-humored. But, being good-humored doesn't suggest it's funny. The only funny parts are the ones we see Renan Gioelli and Ailton Graça; although they don't have any scenes together. So let's see the story: Duca (Darlan Cunha, very sleepy), his father Laerte (Ailton Graça, excellent, but not brilliant), his mother Cleia (Dira Paes, nothing unusual), and his uncle Eder (Lazaro Ramos, not so good and supposedly the "male lead"), are all black. The story begins when Eder enters his brother's apartment (his brother is Laerte) and the first thing he says is "I killed a guy". Then the story introduces us to Duca's best friends: Kid (Renan Gioelli) and Isa (Sophia Reis). Duca secretly loves Isa. Isa secretly loves Kid. Kid doesn't hide from anyone that he loves all girls. During the movie--short movie, it has 80 minutes of picture, plus 5 of credits--we see Duca trying to "seduce" Isa--for lack of a better word--and how Isa and Kid help (or bother) Duce while he tries to solve his uncle's misunderstood story. There are some (weak) surprises as the movie goes and my favorite scene is the last, which is about two minutes long and shot in one shot. 'Course I won't tell what happens in this scene. In the DVD, there is a special feature, that shows the actors improvising their characters as if they were making a testimony for something, but in it they just comment the other characters by their point-of-view. Very funny. Then, there's the production part. The camera is clearly visible twice in the movie (both of them reflected in cars) and the score (not the songs) sometimes doesn't tie with the scene's thematic. But, hey, it's not just bad things. The editing is very precise (check out that scene where we see Éder exiting frame from left as the same Éder is entering frame from right). Art direction is nice. Costumes are very alike normal middle-class Brazilian teenagers. Jorge Furtado's directing is functional. Let's review the acting: Darlan Cunha--just bad; Sophia Reis--shows a lot of talent in her first feature; Renan Gioelli--particularly I think he's the best actor in the film; Ailton Graça--good supporting work; Dira Paes--nothing new; Lazaro Ramos--now, this guy is awful; Deborah Secco--she's as awful as Lazaro Ramos. But, the biggest problem in the film is the screenplay. It just doesn't get us excited.