Não Por Acaso

Many Brazilian movies have the same problem: They got excellent people working on them and they achieve excellent technical quality, but the story's are just not interesting enough.

In Hollywood people manage to conceal this non-interesting story's by putting enormous amount of visual effects, or situations that are made to impress the audience. In those case you can actually see this not-so-great story's and actually like the movie because you get so impressed by all that show, that you kinda forget that the story was no big deal.

But in Brazil, you don't have money to blow up entire sets or whatever, so it is fundamental that the story is extremely interesting.

IN this films case, it is a very well-made movie, but the story is slow and you can't really get excited or touched by the characters drama. I left the theater with the impression "well, it wasn't a bad movie ... but it wasn't good either." It was a common story, with a common ending, and the developing of the story, that should be the thing that would make a difference, was also ordinary.

So, for a movie that can't add more than all the others, it should get an average vote : a 5.

I saw this film the other evening at a local Latin-American film festival. Some comments on this film describe it as slow, but the director was establishing a background that widens to include two separate stories originating in a car accident that kills the wife and the girlfriend of the film's central characters; of how those characters cope by dealing with women coming into, then almost exiting, their lives. I found the film subdued (and certainly not dull), the characters believable, their reactions to each other credible. The relationship of Pedro (the pool table carpenter) with Lucia, a businesswoman undergoing career problems, works well: they meet through a mutual contact, become interested in each other, then go through a difficult patch before (it is suggested) becoming reunited. Lucia was worried that he was trying to replace his dead girlfriend with her. Final note: the women, true to the country the film is set in, look good and are good to look at.

This is a film with good actors, good direction, very interesting elements and characters, but perhaps a too loose connection between all of that. OK, the two main characters are both men who control - either traffic lights or the white ball on a pool table. Death imposes unpredictable changes on their lives. Two women appear in their lives. From accepting the changes until eventual happy ends it is not easy for either of them. Those changes, however, are not very convincing, maybe not developed deeply enough. There is a feeling that the film opens too much the possibilities without putting everything together properly. The pace is not fast but the outcome seems in a hurry. What a pity... I did like the characters and their personal issues and idiosyncrasies. They deserved more.

Imagine a palace with 1000 doors. You have to move in and out of the palace everyday, but you cannot open its doors. They open automatically for you...you just have to wait for a little while in front of them. But what if the doors take more time to open ? Or less time ? In fact your life could be definitely different. "Não por acaso" deals with this time issue: how a fraction of time could affect people's destiny and relationships. The plot takes place in a big city, whether it is São Paulo or New York, Paris or Buenos Aires makes no difference. Human touch is present throughout the movie, intermingled in urban scenes, where time flows in a slower and unrushed manner. This approach invites the viewer to a deeper reflection of the meaning of time in our 21st century global society.

When our intake of Brazilian cinema tends to be dominated by guns, violence and exotica, it is refreshing to experience a more refined slice of top-notch art-house.

Interlinking lives, interlinking roads, channel emotions to avoid collisions and pile-ups. And in the face of heart-wrenching loss that allows little freedom from harsh realities of circumstance.

Within this modern, teeming city of São Paulo, the relaxed warmth so typical of Brazilian communication pervades even the high tech control centre from which traffic is directed. To Enio, the swirling traffic is poetry in motion. Poetry he controls. Keep everything flowing. A blocked road, an accident, can have repercussions for a long way. He visualises pathways. Brings them to life on control screen. Issues instructions to controllers and traffic police on the ground. Tenderly looks after it all.

Across town, another caring control-freak sees pathways on the snooker board. Angles of incidence, angles of reflection. Backspins and follow-throughs. Forcing strokes and winning hazards. Like Enio, Pedro mathematically plans pathways of action and reaction. Mental flow-diagrams to help him win. But there is always an unknown factor. "Why practice a series not knowing what the other guy will do?" asks his beautiful but down-to-earth young lover.

Enio comes to a similar conclusion when reunited with estranged daughter, Bia: "We try so hard to foresee things . . . then something happens and we don't know what the consequences will be." Enio and Pedro control everything in their life. It becomes a metaphor to express their emotional outlook. But, when they both have to deal with sudden loss, their abilities to cope with the collision of emotions need something new. The structure of Not by Chance resembles the award-winning film, Crash. Though with rather subtler displays of emotion. Strangers' lives are distantly inter-related but with a gentleness that is deeply touching. Enio and Pedro must both make choices about new opportunities that life brings them.

A sudden outburst by Pedro's girlfriend recalls the righteous temper tantrums of women on all-encompassing Brazilian soap operas. Latin fieriness is institutionalised and used with crushing effect. As soon as Pedro relents, she is all soft and feminine again. His 'helpless' soulmate that gives up her more organised lifestyle and relishes flattering his male ego.

A curious aspect of Brazilian life is strangely explained. Enio shows his daughter how certain main roads are barred to traffic on special days. It might be a festival. A day set aside for joggers or children. Or simply, when pedestrians can use the extra space afforded by a main road. It is a luxury they allow themselves in a country which already has probably more official holidays than any other in the world. Brasilians know how to relax. Even in this metropolis. And it quietly suggests the idea of emotional space, the ability to deliberately prioritise it. (Something we perhaps find hard in the West to do).

Not by Chance has already won awards in the highly competitive Latin American film market. It is a deeply meditative, if surprisingly fast-moving film that allows the thoughtful viewer to contemplate the existential choices which life brings and how we handle them. Acting is first-rate without being flashy. Cinematography is also very impressive. From the google-earth style opening camera-work to subtle use of ghost images that let us into the protagonists' thoughts. Snooker never looked so exciting. Transitions from boardroom to bedroom are cleverly handled. But the ending, and the degree of control Enio exerts, seems a little improbable. We can allow it once we pick up on the symbolic nature of his actions. Or maybe even find it humorous. But a casual viewer might be left wondering, 'So what?'