Behind the Trees

Thiago Cazado needs to find a new job pronto. "About Us" was a disaster and six years later so was this insipid effort. Don't get me started on the "acting". Not one of the members of the cast knew how to perform convincingly. The usage of speaking thoughts out loud was so utterly trite that it had me in stitches.

The storyline? Give over! There wasn't one that made sense. Interspersed with the main plot were extraneous elements that led nowhere such as the rent boy and the armed robbery. It was clear that the film was done on a shoestring because the budget didn't run to hazard suits for the forensics guys.

As for the "climax", well I've never seen anything so poorly fabricated. Paolo sees everything revealed from "behind the trees" - geddit? Really. From his vantage point he sees that his neighbour's wife rejects her husband, Paolo's own wife makes a confession and declaration, the village priest is revealed as a hypocrite. All in the space of 3 minutes.

Then there's a sort of epilogue. Some sort of magic is invoked - confess and you might get him back. I'm not going to write a spoiler. If you want to find out, you'll have to suffer for eighty five minutes as I did.