Não Por Acaso

Following on the same device as used in Amorros Perros and Crash, Not By Chance uses a car crash to thread two stories together. In a car accident in Sao Paulo, a man and a woman in a car hit a girl and then crash, all three people getting killed. We then follow the lives of the girl's boyfriend and the former partner of the woman in the car. If there is a common thread in the two stories it's difficulties in communication: between the girl killed and her boyfriend and the daughter of the woman killed and her father. This is, however, a very loose thread and the two stories really look as they belong to two different movies.

Not bu Chance is, however, always interesting and very well acted. It does not quite achieve the fluency of the aforementioned films in neatly tying up these stories together but it's a welcome diversion from your usual Hollywood movie.

Phellipe is a poet of image, since hi's short films, he write with poetry the image in movement, i have the honor to be hi's student, it's wonderful to see him for the first time in a cinema! Congratulations! In his first film, "The Stairs", i saw an different point of view of narrative, the man who upstairs, don't move it in any other side, so he put the camera in many point's of you don't see anything, just the stairs, so the man became a insane person because he couldn't move it, Barcinski make an idea about the lost of a mind control with the person, in this film, it's about the casualty in change's life in 2 second's, and the lost of the life control, so it's interesting to saw two point of view about the lose control of life and mind.

Imagine a palace with 1000 doors. You have to move in and out of the palace everyday, but you cannot open its doors. They open automatically for you...you just have to wait for a little while in front of them. But what if the doors take more time to open ? Or less time ? In fact your life could be definitely different. "Não por acaso" deals with this time issue: how a fraction of time could affect people's destiny and relationships. The plot takes place in a big city, whether it is São Paulo or New York, Paris or Buenos Aires makes no difference. Human touch is present throughout the movie, intermingled in urban scenes, where time flows in a slower and unrushed manner. This approach invites the viewer to a deeper reflection of the meaning of time in our 21st century global society.

Many Brazilian movies have the same problem: They got excellent people working on them and they achieve excellent technical quality, but the story's are just not interesting enough.

In Hollywood people manage to conceal this non-interesting story's by putting enormous amount of visual effects, or situations that are made to impress the audience. In those case you can actually see this not-so-great story's and actually like the movie because you get so impressed by all that show, that you kinda forget that the story was no big deal.

But in Brazil, you don't have money to blow up entire sets or whatever, so it is fundamental that the story is extremely interesting.

IN this films case, it is a very well-made movie, but the story is slow and you can't really get excited or touched by the characters drama. I left the theater with the impression "well, it wasn't a bad movie ... but it wasn't good either." It was a common story, with a common ending, and the developing of the story, that should be the thing that would make a difference, was also ordinary.

So, for a movie that can't add more than all the others, it should get an average vote : a 5.

I saw this film the other evening at a local Latin-American film festival. Some comments on this film describe it as slow, but the director was establishing a background that widens to include two separate stories originating in a car accident that kills the wife and the girlfriend of the film's central characters; of how those characters cope by dealing with women coming into, then almost exiting, their lives. I found the film subdued (and certainly not dull), the characters believable, their reactions to each other credible. The relationship of Pedro (the pool table carpenter) with Lucia, a businesswoman undergoing career problems, works well: they meet through a mutual contact, become interested in each other, then go through a difficult patch before (it is suggested) becoming reunited. Lucia was worried that he was trying to replace his dead girlfriend with her. Final note: the women, true to the country the film is set in, look good and are good to look at.