Gabriela

This 1983 remake of Gabriela, directed by Bruno Barretto, features THE most sensuous performance of Sonia Braga on film--interesting, considering she was in the 1976 original film, also as the title character. But Barretto does things the previous director did not do, and nails the story, as well as casting, also interestingly, Marcello Mastrioanni as the Syrian Nacib who is entranced by Gabriela's obvious femaleness. In what is very likely the most sensuous scene in filmdom--or certainly one of them--he has her over a first floor window. You can actually feel the room temperature rising around you when this coupling is going on.

What it is that Barretto nails is the spirit of Jorge Amado's novel--that which captures the uncontrolled and uncontrollable desires of a woman who, as uneducated as she is, rules men with her looks. Nothing new there, but there's no other film like the 1983 Gabriela for "fleshing out" (you will, I am sure, pardon the pun) this concept.

The Mastrioanni-Braga chemistry is white hot and that's true not only for the coupling they do, but also for the arguments they have. Only when there is passionate love can there be passionate arguments, and they are definitely here, no question, making this a film that grabs you by the throat, and by the privates, and squeezes in a gentle way, until all you can finally do is gasp. And with good reason.

This is truly ripe for a DVD release. Where is it?????

Gabriela, Clove & Cinnamon was the novel which marked Jorge Amado's break from pure class warfare--he received several Stalin prizes in his early career!--and embrace of the joys of Brazilian humanity. Sonia Braga has starred in adaptations of three of Amado's novels, all of them magnificent (the other two are Dona Flor and Tieta). I won't say she is here at her sexiest--Sonia Braga is sexy any time she's on screen--but this is one of her best movies, helped much by the other players, among them, curiously, Marcello Mastrioanni as the Syrian immigrant who hires Gabriela as cook and quickly finds himself in a deeper relationship. The plot here involves attitudes toward women and their sexuality, an eventual welcome breakdown of the double standard. and progress of law and order in a society too often ruled by lawlessness and custom. Amado dies without getting a Nobel Prize for Literature: Gabriela and the other two films mentioned convincingly demonstrate why he should have won it.

Second film of Sonia Braga for director.Bruno Baretto, after the hit "Dona Flora and Her Two Husbands" Ms Braga carries the film, not Marcelo Mastroanni. A film that openly discusses corruption in Brazil.

Now that I have finished watching the soap opera Gabriela (2012) based on the 1958 Jorge Amado's novel "Gabriela, Cravo e Canela", I felt some curiosity to also watch this movie, filmed in 1983 and based in the same novel.

This movie was a consequence of the success of the first Gabriela adaptation to the screen. In fact, in 1975, this novel by Jorge Amado was adapted for the first time to a TV show and this soap opera was a tremendous success either in Brazil and Portugal (and many other countries as well, later).

So, a few years later, 1983, "Gabriela, Cravo e Canela" was adapted to cinema by Bruno Barreto. The actress playing the main role, GABRIELA, is the same of the first soap opera, Sonia Braga, and to play NACIB (another important character in the plot) a great figure of the seventh art was called: Marcello Mastroianni! So, as we can see, the cast to this film was not bad, at all!

However, it's a movie, with just one hour and half to tell a story like Gabriela, so, many characters present in the original novel were cut or had minimal roles. In the soap opera it was different of course, the plot was extended and all the characters were detailed built and described. I haven't totally read the original novel but by what I know of it, the 2012 soap opera even create some new characters and subplots focused on them (the character Lindinalva for instance). So, watching the movie, at parts I felt that one hour and half was just too short to describe this story as it deserves. Some scenes felt as they were hardly justified. At parts it seems that just one person that already knows the plot will understand their actions!

Nevertheless the chronology of the events is more accurate to the original novel than in the soap opera. In fact it begins were the novel begins (the murder of DONA SINHAZINHA) and follows the same line of the novel until the end. But there's an important detail: this film is focused essentially on the GABRIELA and NACIB romance and not on the subplot about politics which was also very important in the novel. In fact characters like CORONEL RAMIRO BASTOS and MUNDINHO FALCAO are relegated to a secondary plan and have little importance in the movie's plot.

I guess it might have been a choice of the director: tell this story on the sensual and romantic side and putting the subplot of politics and social criticism to a secondary plan. In fact, as I said before, one hour and half is too short to deeply describe both plots, so he decided to go deeper on the romance and sensuality… OK, it was a choice and we can't complain, especially when we see Sonia Braga…

Another feature that is certainly more accurate in this film than in the recent soap opera is the description of Ilhéus and all the settings. Back to 1925 a city like Ilhéus would certainly look like it's portrayed in this film, rather than it is in the 2012 soap opera (not to mention the cabaret Bataclan, which is not described in the movie but it's portrayed like the cabaret of the film MOULIN ROUGE in the soap opera!).

So, this adaption of "Gabriela, Cravo e Canela" is mostly a sensual romance, a story focused essentially on NACIB and GABRIELA. The film is entertaining and the actors do a good job, I just think it ends being too short as I said before. I felt that plenty of their actions are hardly explained and one that doesn't already know about the novel's plot won't understand many of their actions.

There is the contrast between the Syria of Nacib's father and the Brazil of our movie's present. In Syria, barkeeper Nacib tells us, they kill and mutilate sexy women, and he declares his sympathy with that kind of treatment, but it seems that Brazil is a woman's country.

Gabriela is a fantasy of a completely unaffected, natural woman, who rises out of poverty and without education, but is completely confident of who she is with a marvelous natural grace, and is frankly open in her sexuality and lust for her employer Nacib, played by Marcello Mastroiani. But the pure femininity, I would like to call it innocence, of Sonia Braga's Gabriela, prevails. Such a character is probably only a man's fantasy, but it seems that nowhere more than Brazil would such a creature exist. And how Brazilian that not only is Gabriela, without comment, of unknown and obviously mixed race origins, but so is Nacib, who tells, after constant times of being called "Turk", that he is actually Italian, born of Syrian father and Italian mother.

Although this movie is fairly explicit sexually, it doesn't dwell on its sex scenes. It is its passion and Braga's beauty make this the sexiest mainstream flick I've seen, a heat-wave.