Domingo: Das Familientreffen

A left-wing film, for left-wing people, about a right-wing bourgeois family, we love it, and all the prejudice, not from everyone, but only the vast majority, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, very sad scenes that hurt the soul, especially the harassment of the child by the teenager, disgusting, and necessary to expose the hypocritical society, God, Country and Family, and drugs... Camila Morgado magnificent and representative "This is unproductive land, there is more that I invaded" Lovely southern accent...

Multiple points of view of a bourgeois family on January 1, 2003, when Brazil experienced the historic inauguration of President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva.

Lula da Silva has just become president of Brazil, he's seen as the champion of the downtrodden people of that country. Naturally, the middle class and the wealthy abhor his politics. One male family member expresses sympathy for Marxist ideas, but you get the feeling his sympathy is only skin deep. Jose is aging, a family mainstay whose future is doubtful. The matriarch Laura (beautifully played by Itala Nandi, very well preserved at 80) takes great pleasure in ordering everybody around as if they were her servants. Augusto Madeira and Camila Morgado are Nestor and Bete, a couple who still know how to enjoy their sexuality as they head into middle age. There are many more characters--as many as you would find in an Altman film--but they are backgrounders.

I found the political content to be perfunctory; it's as if the directors and scenarist knew they had to make ideas clash but had little emotion invested in that.

Good film more concerned about environment than in great events. The movie explores class conflicts, reactionary elitism, deeply dysfunctional family and sexual relationships. A good political portrayal of divisions in society in those years of hope (a divisão that decades afterwards would come back in Brazil as hate and revenge).

Good film more concerned about the setting than about great events. The movie explores class conflicts, reactionary elitism, deeply dysfunctional family and sexual relationships. A good political portrayal of divisions in society in those years of hope (a division that would come back decades afterwards in Brazil as hate and revenge). Ítala Nandi's character is realy hateful (she is quite convincing in the role) and Camila Morgado steals the show.