Yo, Tú, Ellos

This film provides a new meditation on female attractiveness, beauty, and sexuality. It provides new situations, and new reactions to situations. It provides new meditations on happiness, and on the roads to happiness. There are even little, possibly unintended, meditations on the slavery inherent in the cash economy. I'll watch this film at least a few more times, and get something new out of it every time.

One of the delights of watching foreign films is that distance, like time, provides a filtering effect. Only the very best of the foreign cinema makes its way to our shores. Therefore, it is not surprising that the cinematography, the score, the acting are all first class. But even by that elevated standard this film is special.

On the face of it, the simple plot of the film would not seem enough to sustain the audience's interest. Darlene, an imposing young woman with an illegitimate child, returns to her home in the outback of the Bahia region of Brazil. There she marries an older man, has his child, then takes up with two other men and has children with them as well, all of them living together on the edge of poverty. The powerful acting, a hauntingly beautiful visual style, a landscape both harsh and lovely all make this a cinematic treasure in which one's attention never flags for a moment. It is a film which continues to resonate weeks after seeing it. I look forward to seeing it again and again.

This is a beautifully directed and photographed tale of a Brazilian countrywoman who, in a reversal of the traditional sexual roles, maintains relationships, and has babies, with several men. In Hollywood this plotline might have resulted in a sleazy drama or zany farce, but director Andrucha Waddington has wisely chosen to follow a realist path, and create a warm, human comedy, about believable characters, set in simple interiors and the arid landscape of interior Bahia.

Another difference from a hypothetical Hollywood version is that the characters largely lack conventional glamour. Regina Casé, who plays the heroine, Darlene, is distinctly homely; her legal husband who ignores her while she gets on with managing his smallholding and cutting sugar cane, and his more affectionate cousin whom she takes as a lover, are both older men. Only Ciro (Luis Carlos Vasconcelos), the young man she later turns to, has obvious physical attraction.

On occasion the realism turns a little magical, under the influence of the surrealistic wide, open vistas and long, empty roads, but Waddington plays down any metaphysical elements. Nor is the movie a social tract, though Regina - knowingly or unknowingly - is asserting her right to live her own life and seek happiness where she can, just like consciously feminist women in the wider world. In the tradition of humanist films, there is an open ending, which may or may not be happy - again, unlike Hollywood.

Forget the Washington Post Critics. Probably done by someone who lacks many kinds of empathy to truly understands the complexity inside and around the life of a women in most poor areas in Brazil. Regina Case is outstanding in this role. Any women who has faced any difficult situation and suffered due to a patriarchal and unequal society will understand the pace of the film and the subtle behavior of this woman in finding ways to reduce the burden of being a woman and a mother.

While some have commented that Regina Case, the female lead, is ugly, that is not remotely so because of an inner (and very natural) radiance, happiness and joy that Regina projects in a fine performance that warms the heart and lifts the spirits. It, along with spectacular photography, other simple but very "real" performances, and a joyous soundtrack easily lifts the movie to a "10" rating. That such a liberated and brilliant movie should come out of Roman Catholic Brazil is surprising -- a woman who manages to satisfy three husbands with only a little "condemnation" registered by others. The movie also gives us a glimpse into how life somehow happily goes on in an unimaginably harsh environment. It makes for an engrossing and rewarding, yet very understated movie. No Hollywood bells and whistles here, thank goodness. It is real.