I watched this film while in one of my stays in Brazil. The media trumpeting and hyping it as some kind of quintessential and good humoured human study of man and woman relationships. But it was nothing but hyping, the film is one of shallowest films I've ever seen. A few days ago, a Brazilian friend of mine allowed me to lend his DVD of the film ... so, very recently, I watched it twice.
I believe, for basic simple reasons, that the worst element in this film is the script itself.. Actually it's a collage of famous quotations (and who knows what else) concerning the relationship in between man and woman. So yes, my dear reader, the film's entire dialogue smells, and what a terrible stench I had to endure, of academic poseur intellectualism ... And, on top of that, the characters' lines are just unconvincing, to the point of being in need of a heavy language adaptation ... It's a film about love relationships amongst middle-class heterosexual couples ... and the Brazilian middle- class does not talk like that ... besides, the Brazilian middle-class only loves itself in a general mix of contempt and lavish attempts of instrumentation towards the lower classes ... in fact, the film presents a self-portrait of Brazil's middle-class ... better still, how it prefers to paint itself ... no matter how divorced from the way Brazilians really handle their love affairs ... and believe me, Brazilians in general are more creative (most specially the ladies) and sentimental than what the scriptwriter ever cared to even take notice.
Now the main actors. I'm a big fan of Andréa Beltrão ... one of Brazil's natural born funny ladies ... and she's an actress of great talent. The first time I took notice of her skills as a comedian, in a another previous stay in Brazil, she was working in a Brazilian sitcom (sort of) - Armação Ilimitada (which could roughly be translated to 'Scam Unlimited') - playing the role of a reporter working for a newspaper while switching her love preferences in between two adventurous surfers who were buddies and shared the same home. And she was the best thing in that sitcom. But in PDA she's just tied down by the dialogue's obvious artificiality ... in this film, her talents are nothing but a glimpse of her better performances. On the other side, Daniel Dantas has a long history of being a totally untalented actor in a never ending string of Brazilian soap-operas ... and in PDA there he is ... him and his absolute lack of talent. Like in all the soaps he ever worked in, he can't act, he just plays himself ... and does it bluntly I should add.
I gave it a 1 for the effort . And it's definitely a film a would never suggest ... not even for the sake a lightly humoured pastime. Brazil has produced some great films and watching Pequeno Dicionário Amoroso is a total waste of time and money ... rent something else.
