A Penúltima Donzela

Intelligent, beautiful Tania, presumably the next-to-the-last virgin left in Rio in 1969, is checking things out. She attends college and works for a fashion magazine. She has a cute boyfriend belonging to the same social class. Tania also has very conservative parents. Her dad obsesses about the "Russian influence" which is tearing down the sacredness of the family. But despite his watchfulness, he is heading for his own family crisis.

The trouble - and comedy - starts when Tania begins to question the mores and morals of her conservative upbringing. She sneaks out in a bikini. She dabbles in leftist politics. She calls her boyfriend out for sleeping with "other" girls out of respect for her. And, most importantly to the plot, she has a fling with an older guy - Oswaldo- a photographer for the magazine.

Yet it's not just the conservatism that gets the old poke in the ribs. Through Tania's eyes, we see various societal incongruities: her hip boyfriend won't go to the movies because he "doesn't like Brazilian cinema." A young intellectual tries to seduce a girl on the beach by spouting feminist rhetoric. (Although the girl mistakes Simone de Bouvouir for a TV personality, she easily counters the guy's rationale for premarital sex by pointing out that Bouvouir was married to Sartre.) Tania's school friends mock the photographer because he's "old." And a relative, brought in to help Tania's family weather the crisis, questions the family's move to Rio and says "this never would have happened in Belo Horizante."

There is a subtle theme in the movie of looking deeply at the things we take for granted. Oswaldo shows Tania how to use a camera and she is fascinated by taking close-ups of nature, such as leaves and spider webs.

In " A Penultima Donzela", images speak louder than words. As Tania crosses a plaza, she sees a street photographer's stand with examples of his work, which are rather crude and almost like those in an automated picture booth. We"know" that the photographs don't simply remind Tania of Oswaldo; she is also acknowledging a new sophistication in herself that her relationship with Oswaldo has precipitated.

The title for this movie is clever - the word "donzela" is an old one that formerly referred to a maiden of noble birth; but in its modern usage it means a virgin. There is another level to the title - although Tania loses her virginity, she remains innocent and therefore "noble" by rejecting the hypocrisy surrounding her.

It is touching and interesting that when Tania's little brother had a nightmare about the Russians, his father comforts him by saying that there are no Russians. Tania's father can perhaps be forgiven for fearing the Russians, because the whole country was under a military dictatorship for years due to real or manufactured fears of communism. It's hard to believe that this film was made during the heyday of the dictatorship because there was tight censorship of all mass communication and art (which effectively made all art political). In what is perhaps the most ironic scene, Tania's dad imagines Russian communists holding his daughter down and torturing her. Yet in reality, torture was a systematic and daily function of the Brazilian government, justified by the threat of communism.

Many popular songs during the dictatorship slipped under the censor's by seeming to be about a woman, yet actually referring to Brazil. In a way, I can see Tania as a symbol of a Brazil ready to emerge from military repression.

See this movie if you get a chance! Even if you're not as obsessed with Brazil as I am (hence the rambling commentary) I believe you will love this film because it works beautifully as a comedy and its themes are universal. The acting is wonderful. The music by Egberto Gismonti is quite beautiful and haunting : it is elegant, tense and soaring by turns.