User reviews

Independent Brazilian film with amateur actors (acting in a theatrical style), astonishing cinematography and edition, very little dialog, and a symbolic (and somewhat hermetic) story about the life of people living in the margin, portraying the poor, among prostitutes and beggars, near slums and garbage on the margins of Tietê river. It is a quite unique film. It seems that Charlie Chaplin, Roberto Rossellini and Mikhail Kalatozov have been mixed in a cauldron with Brazilian sauce.

The director Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias was an independent filmmaker, his work spans since 1955 into 1993, either as director or whilst as cinematographer as well, A Margin was his first full-length film and certainly among their best productions due the engaging subject over the homeless people living at slums in Tiete's river floodplain when a newest freeway has been building in one side city only.

The story is focusing in four main characters, starting with an unemployed white man (Mario Benvenutti) in an affair with a gorgeous black woman (Valeria Vidal) fooling around many ruins factories of Tiete riverside, hereinafter the odd couple is about to be marry, the bride receives a virginal wedding dress, unfortunately in a tragic event the marriage is fade away.

The second story is about a beauty blonde woman (Lucy Rangel) often wooded by a nut guy (Bentinho) she tries hard living worthily selling coffee at downtown officers, sadly her bad financial position and undeniable beauty woefully attracts harassment from freeloaders business men, she ends up on prostitution and has a tragic ending likewise the first couple.

The wise director exposes in many sequences the underground of these poor people coming from everywhere to big city likes São Paulo, living at countless slums spotted alongside the dirty river, according my own acknowledge of the area, the picture were shot at opening sequence in a improvised footbridge in front of Portuguesa stadium, nowadays nearby Vila Guilherme's bridge, can be seen clearly the spotlights, in that time the stadium didn't still finished yet like now, moreover A Margem is a terrific historical period piece of late sixties about our tainted river that sadly it remains today.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 1991 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-Youtube / Rating: 8.