Amarelo Manga

If you are looking for a mellow, soft, blockbuster movie, certainly amarelo Manga is not the one. No one is assassinated in this movie, but there are really strong scenes. This does not mean that the movie is only for the strong hearted. NOT! Amarelo Manga shows how life can be yellow, not golden beautiful yellow, but mango rotten one. The plotline happens in the outskirts of Recife, capital of Pernambuco, one of the biggest cities in the Northeast, and one of the poorest region of Brazil. Five people connected in stories of love, betrayal, work, and desire. Each one with his own problems and crazyness, something that is not for from our daily reality. Even though 80% of the directing, acting, photography is amazing, the other 20% of extremely bad moments can put some people off. But, movies lovers will like this different style, something that cannot be found not only in Hollywood mainstream movies (all exactly the same), but also is not found in Woody Allen, Kiarostami, Almodovar, Rohmer, Dardeene, etc. movies. And this is why worth a lot seeing this movie: is something that is different from what you have already seen before. The whole experience is new and worthwhile, in the last 5 minutes of the movie one will have an excellent surprise, with one of the best editing and directing in Brazil film history. This movie is receiving excellent reviews from critics, and I hope it gets to theathers around the world, to open more the doors of brazilian cinema to everybody who wants to experience it.

I do not recommend this film and as another reviewer has stated, it is not a good representation of the country or even the city of Recife, Brazil. It is needlessly depressing. If you can take the movie as a criticism of life itself, it could have more meaning. The stereotypes and innuendos depicted about Brazilian life are not characteristic of the subject. The spiritual journey of the main character is depicted as a positive one, but it suggests that the only escape available for her is to have a solitary life.

I went to see this film based on the favourable comments from other Imdb users but I hated it. I am a foreigner living in Brazil and I can tell you that if I saw Brazil the way the director does, I would be on the next plane out of here. I thought the film was insulting, showing the misery in the most degrading and despising way. I am not denying of course that this misery exists but I don't think that the lower class is as repugnant as the film wants to portray it. Religious beliefs, which probably helps a lot of poor people cope with a harsh reality, is shown as a superficial veneer on top of some badly repressed bestiality. In the middle of a film which portrays all its characters as a bunch of near animals, there is a shot where a man is reading a book by Nietzsche. Was this irony? A "clin d'oeil" of the director to his middle class audience? I didn't know what to make of this.

There have been some really good brazilian films lately (eu,tu,eles, central do Brasil,...) but this is not one of them. In fact it seems like a return to the really crap 70s brazilian films where compulsive swearing, unrealistic emotional intensity from beginning to end and any excuse to show a woman's pubic hair were the main ingredients.

In a poor neighborhood in Recife, the lives of exotic and bizarre characters entwine in a bar and in a very low-budget hotel. The queer Dunga (Matheus Nachtergaele) works in the hotel and has a crush on the butcher Wellington (Chico Diaz) that is married with the religious Kika (Dira Paes) and has an affair with his mistress Dayse (Magdale Alves). The sick necrophiliac Isaac (Jonas Bloch) owns a yellow Mercedes Benz and wants to have sex with Lígia (Leona Cavalli) that owns of Bar Avenida.

"Amarelo Manga" is practically the debut of director Cláudio Assis, at least this movie made him famous in Brazil, but actually is a boring exploitation of sex and low level situations. The nudity and sex scenes are absolutely unnecessary and have only the intention of shocking the audiences and most of them are free, like for example, the scenes of the asthmatic fat woman in the hotel; of the sex scene between Kika and Isaac with the hair brush; or Lígia taking her clothes off after closing her bar. I do not like this Brazilian director but many professional critics love him. The cast has great performances but the story is terrible. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Amarelo Manga" ("Mango Yellow")

The experience was hampered by the quality of the pirated work, with low quality audio and image, but enough to taste a beautiful work, the Brazilianness and its ills, sensual nudity, well-developed script, a simple story, almost caricatured, but broken, representative and cotiana, highlighting the performances, big names in cinema, delivering extraordinary staging, it couldn't be different from that... Beautiful movie from Cinema de Retake... THE COVER, vagina, it took me a while to realize.