Lackluster abandon

Love for Sale, following Aïnouz's moody, unusual Madame Satã, is again about a marginal, uncertain character, a young woman who flirts with prostitution while left with the raising of a young child, but this time the result is less of a success, though the Brazilian director does achieve a raw neorealist flavor and the images, though sometimes grainy, are colorful and well-lit.

Hermila (Hermila Guedes) leaves São Paulo and returns to the little town she came from expecting Mateus, her boyfriend, to follow. He never does, and she stays with her grandmother and her young aunt or hangs out with her young friend Georgina (Georgina Castro), who turns tricks. When Mateus doesn't turn up and she learns he's disappeared, she switches from selling raffle tickets for a bottle of whisky to selling ones for herself, or as she calls it, "a night in paradise," planning to go as far as she can away with the money she raises, somewhere in the direction of Porto Allegre. An old boyfriend, João (João Miguel) starts making love to her and says he's mad about her, and Hermila goes along with it, but she's not really interested. When her grandmother finds out about the raffle tickets she gets rough and Hermila leaves for a while; grandma and auntie take care of Mateus junior. Hermila turns a trick or two and eventually gets together enough money to leave town, and she leaves Mateus junior behind. João rather pathetically follows the bus on his motorcycle for a bit, then circles around and comes back. And that's about it.

It's not too clear what Aïnouz was trying to achieve in this film. Visuals are sometimes striking in their evocation of heat and a relentless sun and capture authentic scenery and people, but the action is desultory at best. Madame Satã had a big advantage: a colorful main character, based on a real person, João Francisco dos Santos, with an interesting story and a go-for-broke performance by the remarkable Lázaro Ramos in the lead. With her elegant cheekbones and beautiful body, Hermila Guedes is convincing enough as someone men would buy raffle tickets for, and she projects a range of emotion from despair to wild abandon, but her character is unformed and uncertain and the meandering story focused on her provides little to react to or ponder.

Shown as part of the San Francisco International Film Festival 2007.

SHOWTIMES:
Fri, May 4 / 09:45 / Kabuki /
Mon, May 7 / 06:15 / Kabuki /
Thu, May 10 / 09:10 / PFA /

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