guisreis

It was nice to rewatch this movie. I liked it more now than before. The several characters are colorful and interact in amusing ways. The recurrent direction of numerous actors at once in the same scene is very skilled and successful. All performances are excellent, but perhaps I must highlight Lázaro Ramos, Luciana Souza, boys Vinícius Nascimento and Felipe Fernandes, and Dira Paes. The chaotic and vibrant atmosphere of Salvador, particularly in Carnival and in heightened reality, amuses. The smart script explores well the multiple situations of friendship, rivalry, prejudice, grief, lust, delinquency, party. There is a strategy in the script that reminded me Jorge Furtado's short film Ilha das Flores and Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. In a mostly warm comedy, the message is strong: not everything is celebration in inequal Salvador.

This movie by Federico García H portrays the struggle and fall of Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru II. With a recurrent usage of documentary-like narration, it combines a court film with prior events in which several characters acted either in favour or against José Gabriel Tupac Amaru's plans to conquer independence from Spain and the foundation of a country ruled by an Inca (himself), without several abuses commited by Spanish Crown. While on the one hand pace is not the best, on the other hand the careful costume and production design and the rich depiction of Peruvian indigenous culture (not only in the quéchua language) are great merits which pleased me a lot. It is a historical movie which presents an effort of exploring a decisive moment in Peruvian history and that also inspired several political movements in the following centuries.

The adaptation by some of the stories of Boccaccio's Decameron by Pasolini produced a very unique and amusing movie, full of dark humor, sexual content and Neapolitan dialect. Set in the Middle Ages, but changing Northern Italy for Mezzogiorno, the film shows a great collection of very amoral characters, deviating from the supposedly very strict moral code imposed by the Catholic Church. Greed (and fraud, and theft) and lust (and debauchery, and even harassment) are portrayed as widespread, in stories which vary from hilarious to disturbing. The quite old places that compose the setting and the well made costumes and deformed teeth transport spectator to medieval period, although behavior is as contenporary as it can be.