"Fogo e Paixão" ("Fire and Passion") is anything but its title, and I wonder why such an odd title for an eccentric comedy revolving a
slightly bizarre group of tourists on a bus tour throughout an unnamed Latin America city - the locations reveal as being São Paulo but
no facts are alligned with what's presented. Along foreigners from all around the world, Vilma (Mira Haar) and Helena (Cristina Mutarelli) are two best friends from Brazil who dispute the affections of a noble baron (Carlos Moreno, the eternal Bombril poster boy), as they travel through
many curious places, locations, and small background characters appear here and there, played by the likes of Fernanda Montenegro,
Fernanda Torres, Rita Lee, Giulia Gam, Paulo Autran and others.
Writers/directors Marcio Kogan and Isay Weinfeld were important friends/business partners in the field of architecture who ventured in moviemaking after one short film. Not sure about their film knowledge, but what's shown makes it evident they have taste and some talent,
but no idea of what they wanted to show and what they wanted to convey with a random and episodic series of peculiar characters and
strange situations that aren't strongly entertaining, neither artistically interesting.
Kogan & Weinfeld make some interesting choices when it
comes to silent humor where you need to give a closer look to the cameos and situations to understand the little criticism they want to reflect
on audiences, and even some of the talks revolving the doomed love triangle are fun to watch (as the two actresses are quite funny too). But
overall, there's a feeling that we're not getting much out of anything, it's clearly a case of style over substance with many unusual transitions
(especially beginning and ending) and characters who are thrown to become some mysterious presence in the trip and we never get what
they're doing there, what's their goal. Perhaps the idea was to compose a Fellinesque kind of universe but taking place in the multi-diverse
reality of Brazil. It doesn't work for too long and it feels shallow and empty for most part.
A few transitions that revolve on flights of imagination (as Vilma wrongly believes she has an intuition in knowing other people, but the reality
shows a different story) or dreams and memories from the other passengers, there's an almost poetic and cute presentation of everything. It's
a pity those characters never become an important part of the action, as the story focus on the tour guide and the love triangle, and all that we
know from the group are bits and pieces, and seeing a French girl exclaiming 'Merde' over and over, at everything, is simply not funny, neither
good for some potential drama. It's mostly a neutral point. 5/10.
