With "Maldita Coincidência" ("Damned Coincidence") Sergio Bianchi makes a series of situations rather than developing a plot. Here, Bianchi presents
the days in the lives of a group of misfits, immigrants, poets, militants, hippies, artists, homosexuals and punks who live in a chateau in the
center of São Paulo. They share their views on life, work, reality and the obstacles faced by people while living their strage lives in the Brazilian reality.
The film is a protest catalyst of sorts with nameless characters rambling on, doing some minor work or exciting their pleasures at the same time no one is able to
collect the garbage accumulated in the place which causes the angry of one of the "leaders".
Truth be told but I was expecting a more conventional film when I read the plot summary here. Instead, I got a more experimental project that is a little
difficult to watch and relate at times. I loved the captions that explains part of the characters thoughts about how doomed the future would be in Brazil, it
all seem valid and real. But when the characters are seem to go too deep into drugs and bad trips with lousy sonorous effects the movie dragged on and on, and
by that time I couldn't relate with none of them because they weren't talking to each other anymore or sharing their views of the world. In a few bits I was
reminded of Derek Jarman's "Jubilee" (1978) with this group of misfits trying to survive in society but unlike that the people here are bickering more with
each other than having a real enemy to fight against.
I absolutely loved the chateau where they live, the famous Castelinho da Rua Apa, located in São Paulo downtown. The place was a stage to a tragedy, a murder
that took place in the early 20th Century and was abandoned over the years. By the time the film was shot the place wasn't in much ruins as it later became a
house for the homeless people (no one dared to buy the little castle thinking it was haunted), in a decayed state until its current renovation where now functions
a recycling company and it's all painted and workable. You can see in the movie a halfway state between decay and well structured, but filled with garbage and
wreckage.
For a first feature, Bianchi delivers a quite impressive and daring film. His speech about Brazilian society remained the same and evolved for better films
such as "Romance", "A Causa Secreta" and "Cronicamente Inviável" (one of the greatest Brazilian films ever made and I invite you to watch urgently). On the
other films he has a more conventional storyline, better developed characters and situations and presented São Paulo as a city filled with social contrasts
and contradictions, the middle class crisis while observing poverty and progress from a distance. He injects an acid humor in his later films unlike here
where it's quite difficult to find a meaningful feeling for those low-life characters who refuse to grow and go outside the chateau. I guess in the end
after throwing many ideas to us in the audience they haven't learned a damn thing about anything. They just exist. Was that supposed to be enough when one
is apparently fighting for a cause? 6/10.
