Rio Breaks

Interesting without being entirely gripping. This documentary follows two favela dwelling kids who take to the beautiful beaches of Rio to escape the harsh realities of the slums they live in.

Depressing but with glimmers of optimism, the favelas are always a place for intriguing stories with characters ranging from drug dealers to ordinary children caught up in the violence and struggles of everyday life.

Rio Breaks tells the story of two kids who choose to surf as opposed to earning money working for the slum lords who deal drugs in their favelas. As engaging as the kids' stories, are the other characters, particularly the adults who encourage the kids to keep surfing and to stay in school in order to break away from the inevitability of their young lives being turned into short, crime-led existences.

The structure lets the film down, but the use of cinematography is often beautiful and the central characters are hugely engaging. Like Hoop Dreams, the film takes us through the trials of two young men who have a crossroads before them and big decisions to make that could affect the rest of their lives.

If you've seen City of God or City of Men and want to learn more about kids from the favelas, check out this real slice of life. No guns, drug deals or shootouts. Just two kids caught between the favelas and the ocean.

Rio Breaks is an interesting alternative,as a surfing documentary,to the more well known landmark entry,The Endless Summer.It doesn,t quite have the lyrical photography or the exoticism of the earlier work,which showed three lucky white dudes as they travelled around the globe in search of the perfect wave.Here we see two youths of color from Rio,s hilly slum area who escape getting involved in the drug trade that controls their neighborhoods,and instead spend most of their time on several beaches,one of the few places in a city of rich people and tourists that are open and accessible to the poor.One of the beaches in fact,Arpoador,has now become mainly a hang out for the less well off.The boys learn surfing from the older athletes in the hope of making something of themselves,winning a contest,getting a sponsorship.Instead of flying from beach to beach like the heroes of The Endless Summer,they take a bus between localbeaches.Director Justin Mitchell,s approach is fair and is also a contrast to the now badly dated ,patronizing comments about foreign cultures that now mar the otherwise still charming earlier film.