A teenage drug dealer (Wesley Guimarães); an angry and nostalgic former Sergeant (José Dumont); a furious cop (Fabrício Boliveira) and his hysterical girlfriend
(Samira Carvalho) are all connected in a series of events of possible tragic consequences that takes place in Salvador, Bahia. "Tungstênio" is based on an HQ by
Marcello Quintanilha and like the original source, the film takes a highly unusual approach to present its story, a complicated puzzle that intrigues viewers with its
crazed narrative that goes back and forth several times while we wait for the most interesting and thrilling part of the story where all the four characters are somehow
gathered at a beach where the cop is trying to arrest two illegal fishermen.
Heitor Dhalia makes a very gripping picture that takes some time to evolve from the dangerous scenario and to form a poignant connection between apparently distant
characters yet they're all in the mess created by the veteran Sergeant who claims to create order in the place when noticing the fishermen using of explosive devices to
get their fish. Although the characters sound and look one-dimensional in a certain way, as the story makes its progress we notice that they never are what they appear to be:
the cop is extremely brutish to everyone around him except his friends but there's room for some loving moments with his girlfriend, of whom they clash time and again; the
Sergent seems as a righteous figure who is very fond of his army days but he fails to engage with the crowd watching the confusion at the beach, he keeps yelling random
obscenities to everyone and refuses to identify himself as the one who called the cops on the fishermen; and the drug dealer is a constant mystery since he's acquainted with
the cop and the Sergeant, and that connection can prove to be fatal towards the conclusion.
I don't see much of a deeper meaning about the film, and based on its title I think that there is a higher purpose but it's invisible to us. If we look at the metal
Tungsten and its definition of being "a transitional metal that represents the highest point of fusion between the metals" then maybe the city, the beach, the sun melting over
everyone's heads to the point they get more angry and frustrated to the point of violent/desperate acts, all of those can be considered the point of fusion where everything
and everyone collapses under pressure. They're all united through their little moments of life and everything builds up to make or break, and everything seems a matter of life
or death.
But wait...there's a fifth character, an omniscent narrator (Milhem Cortaz, amazing voice work) who describes the characters past up until that moment in several
flashbacks and sometimes he's the voice of reason that makes the characters act or react to a certain situation. He sees everything and sometimes he manages to interfere
with the action on course. In one particular scene, when the cop is kicked by one of the fishermen, the action stops, fade to black and we hear the narrator pleading to the
cop to react ("Hey man, you're not like this. You're better than this. C'mon react", something on those lines). But we watched him getting kicked, yet somehow the scene
reverses and he manages to act against his attacker. This is one of the many breaks of linearity from the movie and it can upset and annoy viewers for a long time, along with
confusing editing and misplaced camera angles designed to create a feeling of confusion and disorientation (or just follow the HQ idea), which I think it was pretentious,
didn't serve the story and only got in the way.
However, as a story filled with tension, curiosity, social and personal dilemas, "Tungstênio" is actually a very good film with positive performances from everyone
involved - specially Dumont and Cortaz (his narration, creating a sort of internal dialogue with the characters carries plenty of emotions. He's our accomplice in the whole
journey). I'd like to see it again just to see if I can get a new perspective, or perhaps even read the HQ just to see how close both medias were (I heard it's quite
faithful but as usually some thing may have been lost). I recommend for those who enjoy hyperlink stories. 8/10.
