Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Sat May 01, 2010 9:50 pm 
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CHRIS KNIPP'S SFIFF COVERAGE ON FILMLEAF HERE.

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HENRIQUE LARRÉ SHARES A SPLIFF IN THE FAMOUS AND THE DEAD

Doom, the Internet, and an iron bridge in Rio Grande do Sul
Though Esmir Filho is 38, his debut feature The Famous and the Dead feels like the work of a twenty-something still heavily focused on his adolescence. An artistic young man, no doubt, like the film's protagonist, a 16-year-old loner (Henrique Larré) who hangs out with a classmate, Diego (Samuel Reginatto), and lives with his widowed mother (Aurea Baptista). And wanders around what he calls a "sh-t town" in southern Brazil, actually, Teutônia, a municipality in the southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. A native of São Paulo himself, Filho has won numerous awards, including Best Screenplay at Cannes, for short films in which he rehearsed coming-of-age themes in a lighter mode. He also recently created and directed the Brazilian TV series Tudo o que é Sólido Pode Derreter (All That's Solid Can Melt), all of which helps explain his skill with actors here, as well as the film's assured look, though leaving still unexplained the meandering self-indulgence of the film, which focuses so much more on mood than event or direction that it never acquires a rhythm or sense of purpose. However, whatever the weaknesses of The Famous and the Dead, it's a poetic film whose view of youth is a new one for a Latin American filmmaker. And through the Internet, Filho shows how a youth in a remote area is neither rural nor suburban nor urban but a little of all these, a citizen of depressed teenage cyberspace.

The protagonist, based on a book by the same name by Ismael Caneppele, has problems that seem like those of Donnie Darko, except that he's not a genius and isn't pursued by a giant rabbit. The action is now, and this brooding adolescent is a child of the Internet. A lot of his world resolves around his blog, Mr Tambourine Man -- also his online handle and the only name we learn for him -- and some mysterious online videos that he keeps coming back to. Yes, obviously, he's also fascinated by Bob Dylan and is thinking of going to a remote Dylan concert. But he's more concerned with his general sense of doom and uselessness at home. And he's haunted by a tall, strange figure -- perhaps there is a Donnie Darko rabbit after all -- Julian (Ismael Caneppele, again) the boyfriend of Diego's dead sister. Reappeared now after an absence, Julian keeps materializing in the edge of darkness, and eventually takes Mr Tambourine Man for a dangerous journey, while the town is all at a big festival given by the Plattdeutsch community (to which his grandparents belong). This jollity appears to Mr Tambourine Man to be empty, and by then we have begun to see why. There is a malaise infecting the whole town, which no amount of festivity can hide. (But due to the film's insistence on making everything ambiguous, it's not entirely certain all this isn't just the teen angst of the protagonist projected onto his surroundings.)

In between the fog-drenched landscapes and blurry images and a rural-suburban space worthy of David Lynch filmed in handsome wide-screen format there are moments of cunning naturalism. The boy's relations with his mother are both warm and condescending; they play off each other beautifully even as he expresses a typical youth's impatience with her. He refuses to visit his father's grave or go to the festival and he makes fun of his mom for talking to her dog as if it were a person. His scenes with Diego always feel just right, and a pot-smoking scene early on where the two boys laugh and lose track of their conversation, though familiar, is charming and has never been done better. The festival is the real thing. It's shrill, canned ethnicity has an edge of desperation indeed in the film's created context, and when the lights go out at a power station and under the festival's big tent, its as if Julian has brought down doom on Mr Tambourine Man's world. A dream-like sequence when Mr Tambourine Man is united with Diego's lost sister Garota (Tuane Eggers) beside Julian has the quality of an epiphany, as do the protagonist's returns to an iron bridge at night. Here, it turns out, is where Garota drowned herself, and the place seems to have a dangerous pull for him and for the community.

The Variety reviewer Jay Weissberg has pointed out that Filho's view of adolescence as richly, if ambiguously, explored here is much darker than that of "the other Latin American chronicler of teen spirit," Alexis Dos Santos, of Glue and Unmade Beds. It's also much different from the work of the young Mexican director Che Sandoval, whose You Think You're The Prettiest, But You're the Sluttiest depicts a much more social, sexual, and garrulous young man whose existence is exhausting, but free of fog and angst. One also thinks of Gerardo Naranjo (Drama/Mex, I'm Gonna Explode) and, for the treatment of adolescent danger and the Internet, the young American Antonio Campos' Afterschool. For adolescents on film, a computer becomes like a murder weapon. When teen angst is traded online, suicide warnings go up. (But the ending of The Famous and the Dead is characteristically ambiguous.)

The cinematographer was Mauro Pinheiro Jr., who also recently filmed Salles' Linha de Passe. The Famous and the Dead was the winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and Best Film at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival. It has been shown at various Latin American festivals aw well as Locarno and Berlin. Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2010, the film's US premiere.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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