Prompted by some recent Oscar noise; it came away with Best International Feature Film. Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) directed a script by Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega from the memoir/book by son Marcelo Rubens Paiva. With a soundtrack by Warren Ellis! In two sittings.
The first half-hour or so is an advertisement for upper-middle class 1970s Rio de Janeiro, shot in the over-saturated colours of the day. The beach isn't that busy and one could just wander across the road to an abode sufficiently spacious for five children. It starts to lose momentum once the patriarch is arrested by the military regime, and the final third is a narrowly focused, dutiful and self-absorbed portrait of the matriarch (an all-in Fernanda Torres, Oscar nominated).
Clearly this is a worthy biopic that is an important story to many people; it's highly rated at IMDB and already sits at #146 in their top-250. This might all be a civilised facade on the anger now omnipresent. It was unclear to me why the patriarch was disappeared but not the other members of their small clandestine operation.
Five stars of five from Wendy Ide, but only three of five from colleague Xan Brooks and the same from Peter Bradshaw. Michael Wood.
