O Signo da Cidade

A somewhat depressing film, if the person is already feeling down, I succumb, it gives the slight impression that São Paulo is the land of deaths, suicides, beatings of homosexuals, betrayals, and crazy people, old people who stutter and/or are abandoned, a very strong drama, excellent production, developed by the beautiful couple (I always thought they were the sexiest, since Riacho Doce) Bruna and Ricelli, but there is always hope, a light at the end of the tunnel, beautiful, sad, exciting, touching, painful... It hurt my soul...

While stars and stars move through the sky of São Paulo, casting their magic at random, men and women ask what will become of their dreams and desires. Gil is married and alone. Lydia flirts with danger. Josialdo was born to be a woman. Mônica just wants to do well. On the nighttime radio show where she serves anonymous listeners, astrologer Teca finds herself between the desires of others and her own problems. Little by little, destiny entangles everyone in a single web. In the struggle to break the isolation and find the path to redemption, they will discover the transformative power of solidarity.

'O Signo da Cidade' is a fair see movie. It's subtle and sometimes dense telling the story of different and ordinary lonely people with ordinary problems in a chaotic city with chaotic social matters as São Paulo.

Bruna Lombardi, the main actress and also the writer and the producer of the movie did a good job portraying social relationship difficulties no matter its degree, and their individual fate trying them to change it or not. We all believe in fate and destiny, but do we really make efforts to change them or are we so straight in the believing or lazy enough to leave it as it might be? The screenplay is very well written, with great dialogs and sometimes sentences or sequences that inflict us like a bullet.

With this question in mind Bruna constructs a great idea of the forces that surrounds us. Are we really able to change what is written for our lives? The movie is not about powers or heroic attitudes, but about the choices we make and the path we construct by doing it and our efforts to make it different.

Carlos Alberto Riccelli, the director and producer (and Bruna Lombardi's husband in real life), who's known in Brazil much more for his beauty than his other talents and began his career more as an actor than a director, also did a fair job as a director, but there are moments that his technical vision seems much more a problem than a virtue keeping his focus much more on the perfectionism of the scenes and its visual meanings than about the actors and the loose performances most of them provide giving lines full of superficial emotion, lacking of proper inspiration and guiding.

Even though having great scenes, sometimes seems that you are just watching an ordinary Brazilian soap opera, maybe for the standard model of making movies and TV programs that exists in Brazil dictated by its major and most social/cultural influential TV channel and also the distributor of the movie. But Riccelli and Lombardi's foreign experiences are evident here when trying to introduce some kind of European movie qualities when discussing elements in coherent and profound ways in Brazilian movie industry and that's a lot interesting and daring.

Bruna Lombardi, who follow some of the same steps of her husband and is known in Brazil much more for her beauty than her other talents and also began her career more as an actress than any other thing, seems much more confident and convincing than in most roles she played in the past.

But the efforts of both Riccelli and Lombardi are a lot relevant because thru the years of their career they simply put away their sexy symbol images to improve their artistic qualities studying and producing different kind of things in different artistic scenarios such as movies, TV, music and poetry living their life entirely for the art, proving that they really did efforts to change their fate rather than living in a comfort way, which is kind ironic and meaningful when compared to the main interest of the movie.

Like the main song of the movie says (which is also written by Bruna Lombardi and composed by Riccelli): "...in this town full of people nobody knows what you feel and nobody wants to know about nobody." This sentence is as melancholic and cold as the movie and as the city that the whole story represents.

In the cold São Paulo, the astrologist Teca (Bruna Lombardi) presents a late night show in the radio, with the support of her friend Mônica (Graziela Moretto) and the gay Biô (Bethito Tavares). Her anonymous listeners share their concerns, hopes, loves, despairs, seeking her astrological advice. Her father Aníbal (Juca de Oliveira), who left her mother when she was eleven year-old, is terminal in a hospital, but her stepmother Adèlia (Eva Wilma) refuses to visit him. Teca has some interest in her just-moved next-door neighbor Gil (Malvino Salvador), who has a marriage in crisis with his wife Lydia (Denise Fraga). During a robbery on the street, Marisa meets the travel agent Devanir (Fernando Alves Pinto), they have a love affair and he invites her to travel to Cancun with him. When the depressed client of Teca, Luis (Thiago Pinheiro), commits suicide jumping from her window, Teca seeks out his girlfriend Júlia (Laís Marques) that is ill, left in a low-budget hotel after a provoked abortion. Teca calls a friend that brings the nurse Sombra (Luis Miranda) and, while she heals, Teca lives her personal dramas being sympathetic with her listeners.

The melancholic "O Signo da Cidade" is a kind of tribute to the lonely people in a big city, whose lives are snooped and entwined through the radio show of Teca, who is needy after the end of her marriage and has also her personal problems. The well-written screenplay is complex and cold, like São Paulo is, and is based on the idea that fate is unique like fingerprints. This movie has a great direction of Carlos Alberto Riccelli and magnificent performances of the cast.The soundtrack is very beautiful. I am glad to see that the great actress Bruna Lombardi is still a very beautiful woman, in spite of her age, and also an excellent writer. I like this type of story that follows the style of Robert Altman, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Paul Haggis, just to mention a few other filmmakers, with many characters and entwined situations. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Signo da Cidade" ("The Sign of the City")