De Passagem

This is yet another film about desperate youth in the poor suburbs of big metropolis. Not to mention, that it's a Brazilian film on the subject, a theme which is only as prevalent as misery in the Northeast Region, as the recurrent theme in Brazilian cinema.

However, the excellent acting and brilliant direction sets this one apart. The story is not groundbreaking. Three youths from the miserably poor suburbs of the biggest metropolis in South America (and the Southern Hemisphere) struggle desperately to defy their probable fate.

The banality of the plot notwithstanding, the feature recently won the Audience Award at the Sao Paulo Film Festival, in the city where it takes place, with a population so saturated with this type of film, which personally witnesses similar dramas in every day life. This speaks volumes for the movie.

The film also won the Best picture, director and screenplay awards at the Gramado Festival (the benchmark of the Brazilian film industry) in August 2003, validating critical and film industry acclaim, in addition to its proven popular appeal.

Nevertheless, outside Brazil, the film will really appeal to fans of this depressing, realistic, violent genre - all too frequent in world cinema these days. (...now years, decades even)

Brazilians for sure are more used to this movie, its plot and its surrounding, it is a movie for people who like movies in general, mainly not Hollywood, blockbusters ones.

There is no one scene with blood, shoots, knives, etc. The violence is everywhere in the movie (like it is in the slums of Brazil), but is never portraited explicitly.

The story is about a teenager, who is doing army school in Rio, when he comes back home (Sao Paulo) to recognize the body of his brother that was killed. He then has to take a long trip to the other part of the city (Sao Paulo has 17 million people!!!) with his brother's friend. Then it starts an interesting flashback of his early teens in that slum (and a very interesting also parallel story, beautifully edited).

If you like artsy movies in general, if you study cinema, and you don't want to go out to a boring bar with boring business friends spending money on beers, stay at home and watch this movie, you will like it (mainly if you understood my cynicism).

enjoy.

In "De Passagem" ("Passing By"), Jéferson (Silvio Guindane) is a military school student who takes a leave as he's informed of the mysterious sudden death of his street-wise younger brother. As Jéferson and former childhood friend Kennedy (newcomer Fabio Nepo) leave their slum in the outskirts of São Paulo and cross the big city in buses and trains to identify the dead brother's body in a morgue, flashback scenes of the three kids reveal the happenings of an eventful day years before when they were forced by a trafficker to make a drug delivery that turned out tragically wrong.

The film has professional qualities, considering it's young filmmaker Ricardo Elias's debut feature. The two-buck budget isn't really a problem here, and the cinematography is efficient (though unimaginative), but the pace is so annoyingly slow it feels like a short film over-extended (by the way, I don't have a problem with slow-paced movies per se). Though with plenty of time at its disposal, "De Passagem" barely scratches the surface of the painful themes it's supposed to deal with, such as violence, drug dealing, corruption and absence of public assistance in Brazilian favelas, wasting instead precious time in no-action no-dialog dreary shots of train stations, railways, buses, etc.

The characters are two-dimensional and underdeveloped, lacking depth and life, with contrived, stereotyped behavior and motives -- the "good" suffering mother, the strict religious military father, the sleazy sadistic clerk at the morgue, the nice teacher, the corrupt policeman etc. The little experienced actors do what they can with the material but are far from exciting (although Fabio Nepo has a great face). Some scenes are terribly phony, like the policeman's accidental death (what about that ludicrous fake-looking wound!). At the end, one can't help feeling there are too many misses in the situations and dialog, which are mostly blah and often don't ring true.

"De Passagem" is an honest film, but lacks insight, boldness and emotional power. It pales in comparison with similar subject films like recent dazzlers "City of God" (Fernando Meirelles, Brazil, 2002) or "Ratas Rateros y Ratones" (Sebastián Cordero, Ecuador, 1999), among others. But it must be said this film won many awards in one of Brazil's most traditional film festivals (Gramado), including Best Film, Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actor (Nepo), so you be the judge. Just don't see it if you're feeling sleepy, impatient or demanding.