Feliz Natal

On Christmas Eve, the disturbed owner of a junkyard Caio (Leonardo Medeiros) leaves his wife and travels alone from the countryside to Rio de Janeiro to visit his dysfunctional family and old friends. He is not welcomed by his father and his brother, and he spends the holiday in the house of his former friends that have not grown-up. Further, he recalls the traumatic car accident that he provoked where a young woman died.

The debut of the great actor Selton Mello as director could not be worse. "Feliz Natal" is a pretentious and boring movie that discloses in an extremely slow pace an unpleasant and depressing story of a traumatized man, his dysfunctional family and lazy friends. The performances are excellent but the not well resolved screenplay does not support the actors and actresses. The awful camera work is kept in close most of the time; the edition, lighting and cinematography are extremely poor; and the tedious music score with very few notes is repetitive and monotonous. My vote is two.

Title (Brazil): "Feliz Natal" ("Merry Christmas")

In Hollywood, it is very common actors to decide to turn directors. Some have success, others not. Perhaps the biggest reason this to happen is only for satisfying the proper ego of the artist, who longs for to start to have an intellectual status. The majority of these films directed for actors is without soul, honesty and completely pretentious. The biggest example of Hollywood is Kevin Costner, that tried to be a new John Wayne mixed Clint Eastwood and that, with rare rightness, did not give very certain. The known Brazilian case, but not only, is of the actor Selton Mello, with his false masterpiece " Feliz Natal".

The biggest problem of "Feliz Natal" it is exactly the pretension excess, that by the way was very celebrated by very critical, the reason nobody knows. Selton Mello makes an exercise of so poor, pretentious and previously style that the film pulls out innumerable yawns of the spectator. And the actor still cited influences of the Argentine Lucrecia Martel and the American John Cassavetes. Serious? Therefore this "son" of the two geniuses of the cinema it is more for Frankenstein.

"Feliz Natal" it still possess all the clichés of Brazilian films, since the construction of the personages until the angle used in the filming, and we go to agree that Selton Mello is far from being a Claudio Assis, for example.

Selton Mello very started badly the career of director in a boring workmanship that only serves to increase the ego of the proper author. It is a film without soul. I only hope that Selton Mello does not fall in the same end that the American actor Kevin Costner. By the way, it has a personage of "Celebrity" of Woody Allen that made me remember the reason of "Feliz Natal" to have been carried through.

This movie has been highly overrated by critics, or I'm just stupid and didn't get it.

The fact is that the story of the troubled guy coming back home is quite interesting, but although I really respect and like Selton Mello as an actor, the direction of the film is not good. The editing is quite silly, keeps changing from different angles that doesn't show anything. The TV angles, in which characters are shown too close is not beautifully unpleasant as I believe it was supposed to be, it's just lame. There's a huge difference.

It has some serious thought involved in the production, but the execution is far from good, the ideas are there but the inexperience of the director is very clear although it might be disguised as a different style of film-making, it didn't feel like it.

The acting though, is really good. It's a shame that most of the time the framing and the poor lightning doesn't allow you to enjoy that. The film is mostly in the dark and you can barely see the actor's faces.

I'm aware of the fact that it was not supposed to feel good, to match the story telling and what the character is going through, but in my opinion there are other ways to get the same result, Darren Anorofsky's style, for example.

Overall, I'll just hope that Selton's next project is less pretentious and better executed.

The five is for Selton's career, for the nude of Graziella Moretto, yet silly, and because it was better than "A Erva do Rato".

I really liked the premiere from Selton Mello as director with a movie that shows a family in a not conventional Christmas Eve.

The shake camera, a strong soundtrack and the depression are the elements that build the plot dense and sad.

The film shows clearly what the family institution is dwindling and that is a dead end.

I hope Selton Mello back more quickly with a beautiful movie, poking the wound of many who live in sorrow and in need of medicine black box warning.

Merry Christmas or not! Vitor Stefano Sessões