Les bruits de Recife

This film deals with Brazilian social relations from a historical perspective and innovative focus. The first images show the Big House and the slave quarters on a sugar cane mill where historians say is the origin of Brazilian society. From there the director leads the XXI century to show the consequences in the present time in relations between the descendants of slaves and landowners and the middle and lower classes in the twentieth century neighborhood in the city of Recife (northeast). It's amazing how the director gets not only translate into images different dimensions of social relations in the society but also establishes a link between the past and the present. Nexus that crosses the whole movie and that stressed by a kind of violence that is not present in images but is syncopated by its excellent soundtrack. I'm pretty sure to recommend this film because I believe it worked as a whole to show us an snapshot of the Brazilian society.

In his daring debut, Kleber Mendonça Filho did not just made a film about Brazilian middle class suburbia but placed the audience right on that street.

We take part on the daily lives of the residents, their aspirations and challenges as their characters are opened wide for us to study, judge and ponder upon.

These seemingly ordinary lives that these people lead, experience some sort of change when a street security team is hired to protect them and whilst watching this the question regarding where this is going did pop into my head, it is an area where the new director showed some mastery by not allowing the putting together of the pieces of the puzzle to affect the narrative as we were led to its dramatic conclusion.

An unusual but stimulating experience.

I thought this was really well shot. The story follows a series of scattered lives, the young man pampered, the Gangster wannabe cousins, the elite, the young woman, the grandfather who takes on the private security. A mother and housekeeper. The film has quite a strong level of sexuality to it, yet it's also in a way quite unromantic too. I also got a feeling of violent insecurity from it too, living very much in a gated world. The film is slow but interesting in the end. It works more as a slice of life than a single well oiled story. The cinematography is also very nicely done. If you're interested in Brazilian cinema then check this out.

As for the naturality and the intimacy of the dialogues, one feels as if one is watching a reality show. One has the feeling of watching the private life of the characters. There is a sort of an insinuation of voyeurism, quite telling in the scene in which Bia (Maeve Jenkings, a constant actress in Kleber Mendonças' movies) get excited by the washing machine sound and movements. The whole neighborhood is portraited, with quite an intense amount of realism. There is almost every feasible character in such places: a doorman who sleeps on duty, a drug dealer, a drug addict, an arrogant grandson of a decadent landowner. The director advances, digress, cut the narrative path, regain terrain, give false hints, inserts characters who surprise a good behavior viewer, used to the common north-American paradigm of begin-tension-happy end. It might be a hard movie to understand if the viewer demands a conventional plot. Not everything is explained, although almost every scene makes us think. However, it can be an easy movie if the central tension is understood at the beginning. Where is the main problem? The movie was shot in 2002 when the Brazilian problem of the militias was already into discussion Clodoaldo, a militiaman, and his brother, take care, they surprise the viewer. The 20 Brazilian reais they charge from every neighbor to protect them suggests some more profound thoughts. This is the mystery of this intriguing movie. Either you decipher or you will be devoured.

The Brazilian film O som ao redor was shown in the U.S. with the title Neighbouring Sounds (2012). It was directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho.

The setting for this movie is modern day Recife, Brazil. (Recife is a seaport at the easternmost tip of Brazil.) A better title for the movie would be "Neighborhood Sounds," because the sounds in this affluent neighborhood are intimately involved with the plot.

This is not a violent film. It doesn't take place in a favela, but rather in an affluent neighborhood. Still, violence is always lurking in the neighborhood, just off-screen. Every home has a security system, but any car parked in the street is fair game for thieves.

A security firm comes to the neighborhood, and most of the residents ante up the money to purchase their services. The security men appear honest and capable enough, and hiring them probably made sense. They become part of the neighborhood scene.

Meanwhile, life goes on around them. There's a dog that howls and barks all night, a woman who uses her vacuum to suck marijuana smoke out of her apartment, a pair of lovers, a deliveryman who delivers water and other substances on demand, and the locally influential man who walks past the "caution--sharks" sign to go swimming.

Matters come together in the end in a way I would never have predicted. I'm not going to spoil the ending by even hinting at it. However, it made sense once I thought about it.

We saw the film at the newly refurbished, excellent Dryden Theatre at Eastman House in Rochester, NY. However, it will work very well on DVD.