Cão Sem Dono

Brazil has produced some strong efforts on the cinema front as of late. I am a semi-fluent Portuguese speaker who enjoys watching a lot of Brazilian Cinema to enhance my understanding of the language and culture.

With that being said, this movie bored me to tears. The technique used to tell the "story" makes this feel more like voyeurism than a film. I felt like I was trapped in a room with the most boring person in Brazil. It seems like most of the movie consists of countless minutes of uncomfortable silence and worthless dialog that has nothing to do with the story. Therefore it drags and seems much longer than it actually is.

The director intentionally wanted us to feel like we were sitting in the corner quietly observing. Therefore, there is a total lack of any kind of a soundtrack. In my opinion this really brings the film down. I feel that the director totally dropped the ball by choosing to deliver the story in this manner. This technique may have worked with colorful characters and colorful story. However, we get neither in this film.

The best thing I can say is that the actors did their part. However, superb acting is not enough to save this bore-fest. We could have also done without the horrendous, off key, bedroom singing performance by Marcela.

This is a kind of movie that could be much better if it was more carefully made. OK, the plot isn't wonderful, but there were some good dialogues which, if better developed, could save the film. The main actor does a good job, but in fact nearly everyone seems to be playing people like themselves... The big problem was that there were too many pointless scenes which made me feel that the director had a plot to make a short movie but tried to make a long one... But the worst part of the movie is certainly the end. I don't know how's the story in the book which movie was taken from, but it's one of the most ridiculous endings I ever saw, and I think probably everyone who watched it will agree with me.

"Cão Sem Dono" ("Stray Dog") is the nearest thing resembling a blog that you may see in a movie format. We follow "stray dog" Ciro (scrawny, scruffy Júlio Andrade), a lonely, depressed, boozing, struggling translator whose nihilistic dull life is turned upside down when he meets lively struggling model Marcela (gummy-smiling Tainá Müller), until she's diagnosed with a disease that forces Ciro to realize the urgency of his feelings for her, and also to face his relationship with his parents and his own nameless stray dog (much healthier-looking than Ciro himself).

Most of the film takes place in a bare, shabby flat where the couple make love and avoid talking about their feelings or the past or the future. But "Stray Dog" is a far cry from "Last Tango in Paris": it's a portrait of a Brazilian middle-class 20-something urban generation that failed to make the transition from adolescence into adulthood, marked by emotional, political and philosophical numbness and lack of goals. It's based on the novella by 27 year-old Daniel Galera, who started his career as --you guessed it -- a blog writer. The movie feels just like reading most blogs you find on the net: confessional, self-centered and disillusioned.

"Stray Dog" is just 82 minutes long, though it feels like 120. Not just for the repetitiveness of the scenes and situations, but also because we're stuck with a main character so numb and depressed we wish he were into amphetamines instead of booze and pot. The film becomes a little more lively every time anyone else is on the screen (especially the dog), though most of the actors are asked to perform in a "real-life" key (overlapping banal dialog, mumbling, poor improvising) that makes them little interesting. Fortunately, there are two or three good quotes in prose and poetry (by Sergio Faraco, among others) to momentarily save our ears from the dominant triviality. Most annoying is the film's denouement: a happy ending here was SO uncalled for and SO dissonant with the film's overall mood that director Beto Brant's solution is to do it quickly -- it's the most contrived, unsatisfying, unconvincing happy (or any) ending in recent times and a particular letdown considering Brant's former films (his previous films had quite stunning finales).

Brant's choices continue to astound many of his followers: his first three films ("O Matador", "Ação entre Amigos", "O Invasor") showed he possessed exciting wit, technique and rhythm, with a gift for taut story-telling that's very rare in Brazilian film-making. With his later "Crime Delicado", he chose to experiment with literary and theatrical textures, and though the film never really caught fire, his visual solutions still glowed. With "Cão sem Dono", Brant's talents seem completely wasted: he dives into a petty-poetry, amateur-looking, visually and aurally boring, "love's-the-cure" film that we might expect from an inexperienced 20-something filmmaker (Brant is 42).

Anyway, this film has won a number of awards, and may attract romantic, poetic-natured adolescents and young adults. Tainá Müller's beauty is a definite plus here (though her awful singing is a major turn-off) counterbalancing the fact that we have to endure the sight of Júlio Andrade's scrawny, corpse-like body wearing nothing but drab briefs through most of the film.

In Porto Alegre, the unemployed Ciro (Júlio Andrade) has a dull life in a simple apartment with a nameless stray dog that he had found on the streets. Ciro is supported by his parents and works every now and then in translation of Russian. When he meets the aspiring actress Marcela (Tainá Müller), who dreams on traveling to other places, they immediately fall in love for each other. However, Marcela has a lymphoma and travels for a treatment, and alone Marcelo becomes depressed and returns to his parents home.

"Cão Sem Dono" is a nice movie, very well acted and with a realistic story disclosed in a extremely slow pace. However, the weak screenplay does not develop well the characters, and the viewer ends the movie, for example, not sure about what Ciro might have studied (we know that he has college education and occasionally works in translations of Russian only, but we do not know his profession) or whether Marcela is an aspiring actress or model. The dialogs are very poor, there are some ellipses and the story is quite pointless, with an open conclusion. Last but not the least, the comparison of the situation of Ciro and his stray dog never works. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Cão Sem Dono" ("Stray Dog")

I've always been a fan of Beto Brant's movies, but I've to say that the man is taking his work into new dimensions. "Crime Delicado" was an amazing film, but Cão Sem Dono has blown off the charts, and for that I give a few reasons:

1. Mise en scene: perfectly done dialogues that sometimes looked as if you were watching a documentary.

2. Acting: amazing actors unknown to the general public. A fact that alone states that Brazil has lots to offer;

3. Regionalism: To see Porto Alegre and the gaúchos depicted in a movie is to get to know a little bit more about Brazil and its immense cultural diversity. The slangs, the habits, and the characters of another great metropolitan area in the country;

4. Literature: Brant shows great technique on adapting the work of a young Brazilian writer, Daniel Galera. While many Brazilians still avoid reading, Brant believes strongly that through great literature he can achieve great things.

Beto Brant assumes the fact that he lives in Brazil now. He looks no further but to this moment in time, optimizing what this society has and no one wants to see it: PURE LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!! Congratulations, keep filming, keep the rhythm! Keep charging!