A Dama do Lotação

Neville de Almeida's movie "A Dama do Lotação" ("Lady on the Bus" in English) seems to be a ripoff of "Belle du Jour". Sônia Braga plays a woman who gets married but doesn't want to have sex with her husband, so he rapes her. She spends most of the rest of the movie picking up men and having sex with them. This woman bangs just about every man except her husband. On the one hand, the movie does a good job showing the superficiality and falsity of the lifestyle of Brazil's ruling class, but most of the movie seems as if it's lifted from "Belle du Jour".

It's not a bad movie. There's some great shots of Rio de Janeiro, but the plot just creates a sense of deja vu. However, I will say that if you've ever wondered what Sônia Braga REALLY looks like, then this is definitely a movie that you'll want to see.

After being raised together since they were children, Solange (Sonia Braga) and Carlos (Nuno Leal Maia) get married in a traditional wedding. In the wedding night, the virgin Solange refuses to make love and is raped by her husband. Trying to prove to herself that she is not frigid, every day Solange gets a bus and has sex with strangers, with Carlos's best friend, with her father-in-law, but not with her beloved husband.

"A Dama do Lotação" is a story of Brazilian writer Nelson Rodrigues that became an erotic and amoral Brazilian classic movie. The writer Nelson Rodrigues had a very amoral view of the Church, the family and the mankind. In his view, all the families are or become rotten; the middle class is very decadent and false; all the women are bitch and like to be spanked; mankind and church are corrupt and hypocrite. Therefore, " A Dama do Lotação" presents many elements of the universe of Nelson Rodrigues. Sonia Braga is in the splendor of her beauty and sexuality, immediately after the successful "Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos", and is very hot in the sex scenes. Last but not the least, the wonderful song of Caetano Veloso completes this great movie. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Dama do Lotação" ("The Lady of the Bus")

Note: On 04 June 2011, I saw this film again.

I saw this film when I was a teenager --so I guess if you're an adult and see it for the first time, it wouldn't do much for you, but as a teen who has never been anywhere, or know much of anything, its quite interesting.

What perspective I got from this film: a beautiful woman, Solange, who felt she was doing all of the traditional things in life -- without actually doing it -- did not face all the realities of it...love, marriage, sex, until it was thrust, violently, upon her.

I found that quite interesting considering "Lady on the Bus" was made at a time when women were able to express more individual freedom than that. But this was a different country, different culture, and this film brought that point up clearly and repeatedly.

When Solange got married, which was in a "nice, traditional, family" ceremony, she was in the whirlwind of "the ceremony" and not "the reality" of marriage. She did all the "girly" things of what she thought what was expected of her -- and then, she actually had a real, living, breathing, (sexually stalled through courtship) man who was now her husband to contend with.

Reality. Bitter, reality.

He's now her husband AND his property. She is to do whatever he wants her to do and when. And because she was sexually and emotionally retarded, she cannot understand why.

Maybe it was through the rape during her wedding night -- or maybe it was something else. She tries to get help and in turn transforms into the very thing she was trying to avoid.

Why? There is a malicious reason -- which is the basis of this film.

To make matters more interesting, is to find out how she was led to all of this and why. Sure, you can concentrate on her meeting of strangers for sexual partners on a bus, but you have to look deeper as to WHY that is. That is what kept my interest in the film.

If you're looking for a foreign cinema masterpiece, this isn't it. If you're looking for a soft porn film, errrr...I didn't quite get that either, (remember: this is Sonja at her peak career stage as the South American sizzling sexpot) but if you're looking for a film about a sexually and morally confused woman who's trying to find her footing in life to be whatever it is she is to be, ya might want to give this film a look.