Les bruits de Recife

Sounds punctuate the neighborhood in Kleber Filho's exhilarating Neighboring Sounds: a dog barks incessantly, street vendors blast their stereos, the noise of TVs reverberate through the streets, a vacuum cleaner rumbles, a washing machine vibrates, and a car sideswipes another. Neighboring Sounds employs a wealth of cinematography and sound to chronicle the anxiety that permeates a middle-class street in Recife, Brazil's fifth largest city. Winner of the FIPRECI Prize at the Rotterdam Film Festival and four major awards at the Gramado Film Festival in Brazil, the film appears to be a typical crime drama but becomes a mix of the existential ennui of Antonioni and the paranoia of David Lynch.

Antonioni's own characterization of his 1960 masterpiece, L'Avventura, is a good fit for Filho's first feature, "Nothing," he said," appears as it should in a world where nothing is certain. The only thing certain is the existence of a secret violence that makes everything uncertain." Unlike many Brazilian films, this is not about favelas or drugs, but about the uneasy divide between a growing middle-class and their help living side-by-side in a crowded urban setting. Scenes are framed behind fences and grated doors to suggest maximum isolation, a suggestion that in today's Brazilian urban areas, a melting pot is built out of necessity, not of choice.

The film opens with a montage of black and white photos of workers in a sugarcane plantation peering into the camera with tools raised, and sweat accumulating on their faces from slaving in the fields in the heat of the day. The weary faces suddenly melt into the shot of a young girl on rollerblades in a parking lot surrounded by tall white-walled condos. Like Lucretia Martel's La Cienaga, Neighboring Sounds unfolds in a series of small incidents that convey an atmosphere of encroaching claustrophobia. Pointing to the local power structures that rule the streets, the block is run by the local "don," Francisco (W. J. Solha), a wealthy landlord with a questionable past. João (Gustavo Jahn), Francisco's grandson, is a real estate agent for the family who has established a promising relationship with Sofia (Irma Brown).

Accumulated incidents shape the film's message. João and Sofia are caught naked in their living room by the arriving housemaid Maria (Mauricéa Conceicão) who makes light of the incident, engaging in conversation with João and Sofia in the confining space of his kitchen. Bia (Maeve Jinkins), another nearby resident trying to raise two small children, is consumed by managing her domestic help, organizing English and Mandarin lessons for her young children, while drugging the neighbor's dog, amusing herself by smoking pot delivered to her by a drug-dealing water delivery man, and masturbating to the whir of the washing machine. Meanwhile, Sofia tells João that her CD player has been stolen from her car and asks for help to get it returned.

João immediately suspects his cousin Dinho (Yuri Holanda), a layabout who is used to getting what he wants and reacts aggressively when confronted. Sparked by the car theft and other recent incidents on the block, João hires a security patrol manned by Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos) to oversee the neighborhood's safety. Though the residents of the block are relatively well off, they need more and more security but even then, do not feel safe in a country where there is a large disparity between rich and poor. The security patrol is ostensibly there to ensure the neighbor's safety, but accomplishes the very opposite when their true motives are revealed. As the accumulation of tension explodes in an illuminating burst of sound, the world ends not with a whimper but with a bang.

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.

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.

Neighboouring Sounds is a film about various people living in this one particular city/neighborhood area and the various problems these people have and the growing suspicion they have against one another in their ongoing story lines and what happens when these suspicions boil over instead of being dealt with right away or at least communicated with one another. It would clearly like to be a great film about the various classes of people that make up a city that has great history and great numbers of both rich and poor people trying to make a home in the same terrain, and to that end it starts out very well.

Introducing a slew of characters most of whom all live very close to one another--and deftly sketching in the details of their situations and their problems as well as their personalities--the film does a wonderful job introducing you to the world all of its character live in. As the film bounces back and fourth between the four or five plot lines that are unfolding--you get a great sense of who these people are, why they are the way they are, and what keeps these people both optimistic and pessimistic about their lives---you feel like you understand why the stressed out working mom feels hassled beyond belief by the barking dog next door, you understand the great hope that the 2 young lovers have for one another while trying to deal with each other's baggage (her history and his family) you understand the paranoia that this new neighborhood watch captain brings on the citizens whom he is trying to allegedly protect and serve. The scene where the new self appointed neighborhood watch guy tries to charm the stressed out dog hating woman is really good, in fact i would say the self appointed neighborhood watch guy's subplot was probably my favorite part of the film if only because his story seemed to be the most interesting--it seemed to contain the most promise in terms of storyline to be filled in as the movie goes on.

Unfortunately while the movie goes on, the suspense level that something amazingly bad or something ominous is going on goes on as long as the movie does---the movie keeps heightening the level of suspense we're supposed to feel, goosing the film with quick flashes of a somewhat blurry figure scrambling across the screen at the edge of the frame, or off in the distance, using these various sounds on the soundtrack to suggest that something is about to go down...there's even a good two or three unsettling dream scenes where something completely weird will happen and just when you're saying to yourself What is Happening Now? the film cuts to one of its characters waking up alarmed and somewhat worried about something bad happening in their neighborhood--- this works really really well until it doesn't work...the movie cries wolf once too often to really be effective in the end---there comes a point where you just want to say all right enough premonitions and ominous graffiti signs already---you've earned the right to now scare the crap out of us---but it doesn't--it just keeps going right on along, strongly hinting and suggesting that something horrible is about to happen. with scene after scene of the mere illusion that something wicked this way comes. That the film keeps trying to goose the scares in scene after scene sends the films once captivating energy level down quite a bit---literally it goes from being an engaging and intriguing film to being repetitive and somewhat sleep inducing.

It seems like what the movie is trying to say with its different plot threads is that everything (esp in a city with lots of people rubbing against each other) is cause for worry--some things seem to be worth the worry, and other things seems nothing more then your overactive imagination and paranoia. (is that soccer ball playing kid trying to spy on the rich tutored girl because he likes her or because he wants revenge for his ran over soccer ball?---is the video on the security camera making the rounds on the internet of this guy being killed cause for severe worrying and an all night neighborhood watch force?---are these dream sequences based on anything beyond the characters various stresses???) I can get behind a premise like that in a movie--but i felt that this one doesn't quite know where to take that specific idea once its more or less laid out except to repeat the idea that anything can be cause for suspicion among a community made up of either strangers or even in a supposed tight knit group of people.

It'd be nice to report that the movie ends with a fantastic closing scene one that really captures the fear that everyone feels or at least a slam bang scene of violence that proves that something horrible did finally happen--- while the two closing scenes are fine and kind of deliver on that edgy and unnerved feeling the film's been so thoroughly setting up... there's also a sense of that's it? finality to it (much like life itself???)--while the last scene mirrors the first scene nicely enough---i can't quite recommend this if only because i wasn't entirely sure the film worked as a whole. Movie seems to be more about tone and atmosphere then about any specific plot even tho i'd been steadily watching and observing the characters go through their story lines with some interest at least.

Some people will love the constant quiet paranoia that all the characters keep feeling, and some people will hate the fact that the movie keeps on going with scene after scene of this, but for me i'm not entirely sure that the feeling this movie gives you was one worth sitting thru over 2 hours to feel.

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.