Era Uma Vez...

Nothing like "Cidade da Deus" (City of God), Era uma vez... is a good movie, very realistic but with some problems of screenplay at the final. I don't know why they -the director and the writer- choose that final, is not necessary. Love story, big drama in a wonderful city with many faces like Rio de Janeiro. In this movie you can see the cruelty of the reality in a country where the injustice are so common to poor people. People live and die in Rio but if you put the attention in their faces you can't understand why they look so happy every day of their life's. I being there, in a funk party at night, and when I saw this movie I realize how unconscious was I to went there. May be because many of the people who live in the "morros" are workers and honest. If you are interest to know a little more than the wonderful beaches, women, men and the happy faces that you can see in the beach, this is a good movie to experiment how they live and how many injustice happened in our world.

This is the greatest Brazilian drama movie since Central do Brasil and could be compared to Sheakspeare's Romeo and Juliet.

If you live or have lived in Brazil you know that there is a lot of poverty around you and this movie portrays it really well. It shows how the rich people live next to the poor and the the barrier between both social classes. Aside form the amazing portrayal by Breno Silvera, of what Brazil is, the story really gets your attention from beginning to end. The end is shocking and realistically demonstrates what could happen in a real life situation.

The actors Rodrigo Costa, who lives in the Morro do Canta Galo (where the story takes place), and Cyria Coentro interpreted their characters as if the story was real. Later, Rodrigo Costa revealed in an interview with Maria Gabriela that he lived through a similar experience when younger.

Great plot, story and topic. Following the current trend, the "favela" environment is portrayed with great fidelity, and the same goes for the lifestyle of Rio's young riches. Action scenes are also great and certainly scrape your back from the seats. All the ingredients are there for a great movie. And it could definitely have been one. There are two main reasons it was not:

1. The spectator is not convinced of the true love that must have existed between the main characters for the film to be trustworthy. Most probable cause of this is the lack of key elements to evidence this connection (e.g. scenes where their fundamental values are shown to be similar). This cripples the actors' in their attempt to share screen chemistry.

2. The Romeo and Juliet inspiration is clear throughout the movie. This inspiration was definitely key in creating such a compelling story, but it seems that there was a failure to notice that, at a certain point, the film was already good enough to stand on its own. Because of this, we can almost feel the chains of the original Shakespeare story holding back the development of the movie. Of course there is a very interesting similarity between the two worlds, but allowing the modern story to creatively deviate from the original one would have definitely been a good idea.

All in all, it's one of those movies that - instead of making you mad for having watched such a bad film - it makes you terribly disappointed for not being able to enjoy a piece of art that could have been so much greater. Which, for many movie fans, is even worse.

Based on its fairly positive rating (7.1 at time of watching), I was expecting some original arthouse, or coming-of-age, or at least one of those sunny movies, buzzing in an uplifting dance of drama and passion that we all know Brazil for. As the movie proceeded, I observed the in itself interesting underpinning idea (rich girl from Ipanema falls in love with hotdog selling nêginho from the favela) was so disappointedly executed with uncharismatic acting, corny directing choices, and a hasty, unrealistic screenplay, that I could not connect at all emotionally with the characters in the movie and their one dimensional choices. I then decided to increase the watching speed (long live technology!) to see if things would pick up at any point but the only thing that happened was that the whole thing derailed just like a third-class soap opera but without the advertising - or it must have been for counter-intuitive family bonds, predictable drug lords, lack of loyalty and cheap, conditional love. Imploding into an absolutely unwatchable ending with people tumbilng down like the limp hotdogs our main guy sold at his stall... As a conclusion, the only thing I could do to make something useful out of this waste of time was to type this review for IMDB to warn anybody who appreciates movies and his own taste too much not to fall into the same trap as I did. One star still for the lovely overview shots of favela and beach, one star for the effort and one star for standing up for hotdog vendors.

Rio de Janeiro. Dé (Thiago Martins) lives in the Cantagalo favela in Ipanema. Son of the maid Bernadete (Cyria Coentro) and abandoned by his father, Dé saw his brother Beto being murdered by a drug dealer and his other brother, Carlão (Rocco Pitanga), being exiled from the favela by bandits. Deciding not to follow the path of crime, Dé works selling hot dogs at a beach kiosk. From there he observes Nina (Vitória Frate), the only child of a wealthy family who lives in Vieira Souto, a street in front of Ipanema beach. The two meet on the beach and fall in love. However, the differences between their worlds of origin generate several veiled criticisms and prejudices.

A carioca fairy tale without a happy ending, great choice by Thiago Martins, excellent film, impeccable performances... beautiful, poetic, dramatic, very good...