La vie peu ordinaire de Dona Linhares

A superb film from Brazil. There are movies about love triangles. This is more of a hexagon. Some of the professional critics seem to read more into the story than there is. Basicly, Darlene is an aging manipulative bitch with a great body. She has an earthiness about her that arouses the man in any man. The acting of the principals is brilliant. You don't have to understand Portugese (or read the subtitles)to understand the deep and conflicting emotions. Some regard the film as a comedy. Not at all (although it has its moments of humour.) It's a tremendously well done film about a lady who likes a roll in the hay (or, in this case, sugar bush.) My only complaint is the rather slushy ending. The icing on this spicy cake is the magnificent cinematography...great sweeping vistas and big skies...intriguing camera angles...imaginative framing...carefully painted light. If you like foreign films, this is a must!

Wonderful film. There really is much to love about this film, but the it's strength begins with the realistic, multidimensional performances by Regina Case, Lima Duarte and Stenio Garcia. For every spoken word, their body language and expressions convey countless unspokes desires, emotions, and conflicts. The script is well grounded with very little in the way of broad farcical humor or weepy melodrama. By pushing realism in the dialogue, direction and performances, the characters are rendered with more complexity. More humanity. They aren't reduced to being the romanticized 'noble poor' ciphers present in many films about poor people. Here, there are no saints or devils, only achingly real people doing their best to strike an agreeable accord with life. Even the cinematography serves this goal. This film is packed with beautiful imagery, but at the same time, it never devolves into being a travelogue. Instead the arrid terrain, populated with knarled cashew trees and swept with dust provides an understanding of how the characters find themselves amidst such an arrangement. Some have said this film is a disservice to women, because Darlene has to use sex to gain what she wants and needs. This I think is a pathetic attempt to further an agenda without even really considering the merit of the film itself. Darlene is a woman without many options. In order to fashion a semblance of a happy life, she uses guile, intelligence, charm and strategy to manipulate her fate. Sex just happens to be a tool at her disposal, and in Ciro, she finds a lover who even provides for her sexual needs. She sounds like a strong, self-realized woman to me. Were her character born middle class, I have no doubt she'd go far. Understanding this bit of social commentary only adds to my respect for this film because like other elements present, it's never heavy handed. Overall, I give 'Me You Them' 9 of 10. Of the films I saw in 2001, it ranks only after 'the Circle' as my favorite. Touching, funny, sublimely well balanced and intelligent, I'm hoping Andrucha Waddington makes more films of this caliber..............

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.

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.

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.