Moreintelligentlife.com is the website of Intelligent Life magazine. Articles about Arts, Lifestyle, Travels, and Ideas

BRAZILIAN LIFE AT THE BARBICAN

In Jose Eduardo Belmonte's award-winning 2008 Brazilian film, "If Nothing Else Works Out" ("Se nada mais der certo"), Brazil is not lush and sunny, nor is it filled with soft, warm breezes and rhythmic bossa nova tunes. Instead Belmonte turns his lens on urban Sao Paulo, where skies are often grey, traffic is endless and times are tight for many.

Belmonte has populated his 120-minute feature with adults who are depressed and desperate. Characters cry, sing, fret, disappoint, and sometimes kill each other. A single mother is unable to care for her son as she weans herself off drugs. A young, gay street hustler has friends on every corner but nowhere to go. A jaded journalist can't pay his rent and turns to a series of heists to bring in the cash; a morose, gun-wielding cab driver decides to join him. Yet these are disgruntled members of Brazil's middle class, not the extremely violent, despairing youth of "City of God" (2002), a Brazilian film about gang wars in a Rio de Janeiro favela (slum).

"If Nothing Else Works Out" opened Cinema of Brazil: Urban Tales, a festival running through October 8th at London's Barbican Centre. In this film and others, cities such as Brasilia, Salvador, Rio and Sao Paulo are not merely backdrops, but modern, multifaceted and complicated characters--both frustrating and glorious--alongside their human counterparts.

Another Brazilian film festival, Cine Fest Brasil, features another line-up of contemporary Brazilian films in London later this month, then continues on to Rome in November and Madrid in December.

~ GARY MOSKOWITZ

Picture Credit:  "If Nothing Else Works Out" ("Se nada mais der certo")