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Berlinale 2015, Day 7 (Que horas ela volta?)

For some reason one of my minor fascinations is Brazil. It’s the reason why I watched the marvelous Tropa de Elite and what made me check out the Brazilian films at every Berlinale since then. This one looked promising so it had to be watched. Turns out it was a good idea, it even won the Panorama audience award!

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Que horas ela volta?
Brazil 2015, Anna Muylaert, 111′

Val has been working as a maid in a rich family’s house in São Paulo since more than ten years. She’s irreplaceable help for the parents and a loving nanny and basically second mother for the 17 year old Fabinho whose actual mother is not at home too often. Things change when her actual daughter Jessica announces her visit after being apart for more than ten years because she wants to apply to university in São Paulo. Her confident demeanor shakes up the whole household starting with using the guest room of the house that’s 5 times the size of Val’s room because after all she’s an invited guest.

As Berlin is basically a town of left-wing extremists, with a few rich people, Nazis and old people at the fringes, the movie was a riot for the audience!

The topic of the movie, class relations between the rich and the lower classes and the new-found pride and self-confidence of the latter, is very modern. Jessica and Val are from a working lower-middle class family from the rural north. While Val is deferential, calling the Patrons Dona and Doctor, making sure not to cross invisible lines, always eating the cheap ice cream, Jessica doesn’t care: She’s a guest so of course she takes the guest room, of course she calls the Patrons by their names, of course she walks around the house, of course she eats the good jam and ice cream when it’s offered. She knows what she’s worth and while she’s never rude, this clashes with her mother’s ways and the Patrons’ habit of being the undisputed higher class. While they treat Val with respect and trust they nonetheless see her as someone lower in ranking. Dona Barbara feels threatened as she has been hiding her jealousy of the close bond between Val and Fabinho while her husband and Fabinho are fascinated by this, strange, prideful creature, which of course creates even more tension. In the end, Val and Jessica manage to overcome their differences and estrangement and begin a new part of life together on a very hopeful note.

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Berlinale 2014, Day 10 (Praia do futuro)

It’s possible to buy all the tickets for the very last day of the Berlinale at a special price (6 euros) at the first day of ticket sales. As a result, I ended up getting tickets only competition films (which are otherwise difficult to get) for the last day and made sure we could watch the good ones together (Kraftidioten and Nymphomaniac). That leaves the kind of films I want to see but I doubt anyone else would. “Praia do future” is one of these films because of Wagner Moura.

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Praia do futuro
Brazil/Germany 2013, Karim Ainouz, 106’

Donato is a lifeguard at Future Beach when he fails to rescue a man for the first time. While he tries to cope with what happened, he meets and falls in love with the friend of the man, a tourist from Germany. When Konrad goes back to Berlin, Donato decides to follow him. After Konrad convinces Donato to stay, he realizes that he has a hard time adjusting to the cold city without a beach. Years later, when Donato’s brother comes to Berlin to find him, a lot of things have changed.
Death count: 1.

I will forever remember this movie as the one where you can see Wagner Moura’s penis, and I enjoyed the shots of Berlin in the film. Other than that, everything else was rather unsatisfying. I didn’t care much for the main characters’s story, I don’t really understand how and why Donato had the money to go to Germany but his brother had to save money for years to do the same thing. Sounds like Donato ran away with his family’s money. When I came out of the theater, I overheard a couple of women dissing the film – terrible dialogue, unrealistic etc. I didn’t think it was that bad. Au contraire, I thought the film had many sweet aspects and most of its moodiness made a lot of sense. I even thought that the end of the film, where the trio goes to the sea, was thoughtful and done very nicely. But in general, it’s your standard artsy gay film where nothing is explained (it cuts directly from the hospital scene “why don’t I give you a ride back?” to sex in the car) and everything happens incredibly slowly. In that respect, I think it’s a little sad for Wagner Moura to go from “Tropa de Elite” or even the small role in “Elysium” to a film like this.

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Berlinale 2011, day 8 (the one with no witty description)

Why do people applaud movies where the film team is either dead or absent, or both? (Just laughed at myself about the thought of a present-but-dead film crew…) Self-presentation is a disgustingly dominant human feature. (Cue the irony of me self-importantly pointing out my appearance on camera in yesterday’s post.)

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Don’t let the picture fool you, the film was shot in very nice colour.

Daikon to Ninjin (Radish and Carrot, ?????)
Japan 1964, Shibuya Minoru, 107′

Tokichi Yamaki has loyally served his company for 30 years. Correct in every aspect of his life but having no real ambition he is still only section chief, which his wife and his four daughters like to point out. One day, after selling his stocks to help his irresponsible younger brother he suddenly vanishes.

What a delightful, funny Ozu movie, despite not being an Ozu movie! (side note: I discovered a totally awesome Ozu DVD collection in Poland (of all places!) recently) I guess it shows, when you do an hommage to Ozu, based on a script outline of his. It was the kind of playful, witty serious comedy I’d expect from Billy Wilder, only a little less wild and much more Japanese. The film was shot in the same year the Shinkansen started running, so we had many prominent shots with it. Disregarding its great entertainment value it was highly interesting to see that in 1964 Japan was on one side the classic wooden Ozu-Japan but on the other side things like the Shinkansen, love hotels and many typical features of modern Japan were already starting to show.

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Tropa de Elite 2 – o inimigo agora é outro (Elite Squad 2 – The enemy within)
Brazil 2010, José Padilha, 116′

Ten years later, Nascimento has lost his marriage but is winning the war against the drug trade. Unfortunately, the drug trade is neither the biggest, nor the most dangerous enemy and now things “get personal”.

You could have tacked this onto Tropa de Elite and no one would be able to tell that this is not the same movie, Padilha managed to exactly copy style and feeling of the first movie while throwing a big helping of “dark” in there. Like the first movie, it carefully balances between admiring The Fist Of Brutal Righteousness that is BOPE and the grim consequences and collateral damage of cleaning up with no holding back. In fact, the educational twist that these methods may not be, at least to this degree of consequence, the best for all involved doesn’t happen until about 10-15 minutes before the end of the movie, which is quite a bit later than in its predecessor. Definitely a worthy successor although it doesn’t win points for originality; it really doesn’t have to anyway. It is however close to the perfect sequel and that alone is a big achievement.