Iracema: Uma Transa Amazônica

This is an exceptional film that portrays the direction set by the military dictatorship in Brazil. The acting, filming and the screen play are excellent. Any person interested in Brazil should see it. The subject is the Trans-Amazonic road, an ecological disaster built in the 1970s by the military dictatorship in Brazil, to settle people opposing it and landless peasants. The film denounces and portrays a reality that after three decades proves to be very precise. It is a film that helps to think about the consequences of crude authoritarian rule over a poor and defenseless people. The title and the story, Iracema, draws from a 19th century novel about a girl presented as the emblem of Brazil as a nation.

The film was adopted from the 19th century novel of the same name that was written during the height of the Brazilian Romantic period. The word Iracema is an anagram for the word `America.' Accordingly, the character Iracema represents the continent of America but as the word comes from the Tupi Indian language, she shows that to be Brazilian is to be a mix of both American and Indian culture.

The full title of the film, `Iracema, uma transa amazônica,' is a clever play on words meant to give it a double meaning. The Portuguese translates into English as `an Amazonian affair' when in English the title sounds like `Trans-Amazonian' to intentionally evoke thoughts on the highly controversial Trans-Amazonian highway. The pun in the title is appropriate because while the film chronicles the many affairs of a prostitute in the Amazon, it also discusses the varied opinions of Brazilians about the state of the Amazon at that time considering the heavy industry that was pouring in.

The story follows the downward spiral of a teenage girl who comes from the interior of the Amazon to the large industrial city of Belem to become a prostitute. Even though the film was produced during the most oppressive years of a military regime under strict censorship guidelines, the anti-progress views break through. The significance of her profession of choice reflects the opinion of many Brazilians that the country began prostituting itself to foreign interests by allowing them to come into the Amazon to strip the country of its natural wonderland in the name of progress and economic gain. Iracema is meant to be an allegorical character representing the Amazon and its downward spiral from virginal and healthy to used, corrupted and decaying. That is the path that the character Iracema travels in the film.

In the 70's, the fifteen years old whore Iracema (Edna de Cássia) meets the truck driver Sebastião, a.k.a. "Tião Brazil Grande" (Paulo César Peréio), and travels with him along the Amazon Forest through Transamazônica, the longest Brazilian highway recently built by the military government to bring development to the area settling landless peasants. When Tião drops her on the road, Iracema is submitted to the most decadent types of prostitution to survive.

"Iracema – Uma Transa Amazônica" is an amazing film that discloses the truth about the development of Amazonas, reason why the censorship of the dictatorship has not allowed its exhibition in the movie theaters for many years. In the 70's, the Brazilian military dictatorship opened the longest Brazilian highway though the Amazon forest and the official speech was that this road would bring development to the area settling landless peasants. However, what this movie denounces is the beginning of the announced ecological disaster through the uncontrolled burning of the forest and illegal extraction of wood; slave work; infantile prostitution; corruption. The screenplay and the shootings uses the improvisations of the gifted actor Paulo César Peréio, who interacts with the locals, blending reality with fiction in a very different genre, a sort of "fictional documentary" (later called docudrama). The story is so realistic that it seems that the amateurish Edna de Cássia is really a young prostitute, abused along the shootings. But the director and crew claim that she was really acting. The title is a great joke, playing with words in Portuguese: "Iracema" is a famous 1865 tragic romance of José de Alencar, actually an anagram of the word "America", and tells the story of the Indian Iracema that falls in love for the Caucasian Portuguese Martim. "Transamazônica" is the name of the road, meaning "Trans" + "Amazonas" (Amazon); however, the title is "Transa" (meaning shag) + "Amazonas" (Amazon). My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Iracema – Uma Transa Amazônica" ("Iracema – An Amazonic Shag")