La vie peu ordinaire de Dona Linhares

This film provides a new meditation on female attractiveness, beauty, and sexuality. It provides new situations, and new reactions to situations. It provides new meditations on happiness, and on the roads to happiness. There are even little, possibly unintended, meditations on the slavery inherent in the cash economy. I'll watch this film at least a few more times, and get something new out of it every time.

One of the delights of watching foreign films is that distance, like time, provides a filtering effect. Only the very best of the foreign cinema makes its way to our shores. Therefore, it is not surprising that the cinematography, the score, the acting are all first class. But even by that elevated standard this film is special.

Single mother Darlene from rural Brazil marries Osias, a local pensioner. He neglects her emotionally and treats her like a servant. So she looks for other men for emotional and practical support ... Like many other films from developing countries, it is less polished and stylised than your typical Hollywood movie and is relatively slow moving. In fact, the only negative thing I have to say is that in the first half it really is too slow moving. The plot only takes off in the second half and it is only now that the characters start to develop greater depth and complexity and you wish, afterwards, that more time had been spent on this part of the film. Apart from that, it is beautifully shot and contains in Darlene's charismatic character a person that retains an enormous amount of genuine happiness even in the most adverse circumstances. It is also, despite the extreme poverty it depicts, warm, funny and has three brilliant actors in the main roles, with Lima Duarte (Osias) standing out in particular.

On the face of it, the simple plot of the film would not seem enough to sustain the audience's interest. Darlene, an imposing young woman with an illegitimate child, returns to her home in the outback of the Bahia region of Brazil. There she marries an older man, has his child, then takes up with two other men and has children with them as well, all of them living together on the edge of poverty. The powerful acting, a hauntingly beautiful visual style, a landscape both harsh and lovely all make this a cinematic treasure in which one's attention never flags for a moment. It is a film which continues to resonate weeks after seeing it. I look forward to seeing it again and again.

This film portrays the life of the Brazilian poor in the arid interior, and that life is hard. You take your pleasures where and when you can. Regina Case gives a vivid performance as the polyamorous wife-lover; she is no more "ugly" than Frances McDormand, Maggie Smith or a host of other actresses who don't do Vogue covers. Gilberto Gil's music is very evocative, it's like an actor in the story.

Finally, I want to praise Lima Duarte's performance as the husband; he knows life is passing him by and death is approaching, so he doesn't let Darlene's sexual habits bother him. It is a very expressive star turn in the Philippe Noiret tradition.

This is a beautifully directed and photographed tale of a Brazilian countrywoman who, in a reversal of the traditional sexual roles, maintains relationships, and has babies, with several men. In Hollywood this plotline might have resulted in a sleazy drama or zany farce, but director Andrucha Waddington has wisely chosen to follow a realist path, and create a warm, human comedy, about believable characters, set in simple interiors and the arid landscape of interior Bahia.

Another difference from a hypothetical Hollywood version is that the characters largely lack conventional glamour. Regina Casé, who plays the heroine, Darlene, is distinctly homely; her legal husband who ignores her while she gets on with managing his smallholding and cutting sugar cane, and his more affectionate cousin whom she takes as a lover, are both older men. Only Ciro (Luis Carlos Vasconcelos), the young man she later turns to, has obvious physical attraction.

On occasion the realism turns a little magical, under the influence of the surrealistic wide, open vistas and long, empty roads, but Waddington plays down any metaphysical elements. Nor is the movie a social tract, though Regina - knowingly or unknowingly - is asserting her right to live her own life and seek happiness where she can, just like consciously feminist women in the wider world. In the tradition of humanist films, there is an open ending, which may or may not be happy - again, unlike Hollywood.