LINHA DE PASSE

Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas have co-directed this movie called in original Portuguese:

LINHA DE PASSE

The name is about the line in soccer where the player has to pass the ball to make a goal and win the match. It tells the story about a cleaning lady about 40 years old who raises 4 male kids alone and is pregnant of the 5th. The first three kids are from the same father and white, the youngest one is from a black father and he never met him. And the pregnancy we don't know who the father is. They all live on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, the largest and richest city of Latin America with almost 20 million inhabitants and responsible for more than 20 percent of the GDP of Brazil.

I saw this movie yesterday night and still i am thinking about it. The theater was empty and I guess it hasn't been a great success. It started very slow and boring and I thought to myself that it would be a film just exploiting the passion for soccer in Brazil, but then after the first 5 or so minutes you just get into the story of this touching family who has everything to be apart of adrift but are naturally connected and have a complicity of their own.

For me this movie is very realistic and shows the lives of many contemporary Brazilians who are living poorly and trying to become something in life beside all the riches around them, cleaning for them, delivering for them, playing soccer for them, driving for them and in the end stealing from them as an act of desperation and no solution.

But each of them have a dream and they live by it:
The mother: just wants to raise her kids and see her team win the championship
Older boy: is trying to be a soccer player the only way out for him but his too old already to be taken by any team and falls into the corrupted clubs who asks him 3000 reais as a bribe to sign with them
Second brother: the Latin lover of the family just wants money to raise his own kid who lives with the mother but is always fucking some other girl every other nigh and in order to pay all the expenses ends up stealing money with his motorcycle on the stoplights of the city
Third brother: He just want to pray on the evangelic religion very spread up Brazil where the poor people believe on the power of Jesus but asks the people for ten percent of their income. He is honest but discovers during his journey on the film that it doesn't always pay and also him will crack one day.
Fourth brother: the youngest, still in elementary school but already very old for his age, smart and full of language he's just obsessed to find his father who was a bus driver and spends all free time riding buses driven by black guys around the town.



The directors have chosen to portray a city that is harsh and has no beauty as the city that this kind of poor class people know and yet it's showed in a very real way showing the solidarity among the Brazilians and that in spite of their poor lives this family hangs on, happy as they can be.

The main actress totally deserved her "Palm for best actress" in Cannes Film Festival 2008. Finally one good movie from Brazil that's not cliché about "favelas" and drug dealing and criminality but just poor class, hard life people portrayed in a very subtle and gentle way by the directors. Bravo for both.

Final words: WATCH IT and let yourself get involved by the excruciating reality of the life of these family!

The curious case of BENJAMIN BUTTON

Oh yes... today let me talk about :

"The Curious case of Benjamin Button"

Again, a very promising story, good casting, big budget but unfortunately we can say that the director was like a child with a new toy: using and abusing of the effects and editing.

I had a "Déjà vu" impression when I watched this movie, the script had many unnecessary parts which were supposed to make us laugh such as the man who was strike by lightning 7 times and every time we would see a small clip old-fashion style of the lightning bolt. It was very "Amélie Poulain" like and totally unnecessary and annoying.

The movies is too long, too slow and a part from the fact that he's old and getting young. All the rest is not interesting. The fable just don't work hence I got so bored I slept through some parts.

Cate Blanchett and Queenie are the only ones worth while in this movie. Cate is as usual astonishing and plays beautifully. Brad Pitt on the other hand is loosing hand, he's flat in this movie, I can't believe he even got a nomination for the Oscars.

It's not that I don't like love stories or big blockbusters with famous actors, I just wish some directors would stop taking us viewers for granted.

Final words for this film: Boring, Not worth it!

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

For this first article I decided to talk about the last film I watched:

"SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE"

I watched at home with a DVD lent by a friend who works for a cinema festival, I was happy in the end because I would have regretted so much If i'd payed a ticket to see this movie on a theater!

I love this directors' work but I hate when in the movie business they just create fake trends or fashions in order to defend their lack of new ideas.

Slumdog Millionaire is nothing new, is nothing interesting it starts by the protagonists at young age, very cliché the poor boy from the slums who's always in trouble and who losses everything including his mother and is betrayed by older brother. It sounds and looks like "déjà vu" as an indian "CITY OF GODS".

Then the story just follows on the "clichéism" and bad editing altering one TV program question and a flashback to let us know how the poor boy new the answers to those questions.

As the film goes by we just get bored by the lack of interesting story, as a matter of fact we know the end from the very beginning, and from its diagonal camera shots that instead of making it look cool or interesting just makes us annoyed.

I don't understand why all the buzz around this movie, I tried to avoid to see it but after listening to people adoring it i decided to let myself go and watch it. well I regret it.

Under the excuse the director had no new ideas and wanted to do a tacky-cliché-fable-love-story he just chose to say: "I wanted to do a bollywood movie!" that's the easiest excuse from a director in order to defend a bad tacky no interest story.

Final words: Not worth seeing it !