Brazil
3.5*
Director:
Jorge Furtado
Screenwriter:
Jorge Furtado
Director of Photography:
Alex Sernambi
Running time: 125 minutes
Original title: O homem que copiava
André is a photocopier operator, barely out of his teens, who falls in love with a girl living with her father in the housing block on the other side of the street. He is also a single child living with a single parent – his mother, who spends her evenings in front of the television before shuffling off to bed.
I liked André, and it’s not just because we share a name. He seems genuine, naïve and in love. From time to time, he realises that his prospects don’t seem all that good, but he glimpses bits and pieces of other lives – the lives of the people who come into the shop to have their work photocopied – and wants to work towards a life that provides him with greater opportunities, including the girl, Sylvia.
André makes some impressive illustrations, which we get to see in a handful of animated sequences. But while the film’s first half pulls us in with the main character’s awkward attempts at courtship, the second half loses nearly all credibility with an avalanche of coincidences and a few deaths that easily eliminate the complications resulting from these coincidences.
I wanted to like the film. In the role of André, actor Lázaro Ramos gives a steady performance as a young guy who wants to grow up and leave his impoverished surroundings behind. Although he is much better off than the characters of, say, City of God, he lives with his mother, and his job as a photocopier doesn’t exactly charm the ladies he meets at the nightclub. But the second half, while competently shot and executed, is lazy in its story development and leaves the audience feeling cheated.
Many viewers might find the final reel, in which a secret is revealed that goes a long way towards explaining Sylvia’s tolerance of André’s advances (especially in the early stages when he seems to be stalking her), a bit too romantic at such a late stage of the plot. But while the film is hurt by the incredible sequence of events in its second half, the last 10 minutes are more or less believable and, more importantly, they do represent a state of affairs we want to believe.