There are some aspects of the making of a film that deals with reality. The proximity of view can either bring the details alive to you or make you oblivious to things that are right across from you, plain for all to see. While true the possibilities work in a balanced way for the director. His sympathy (and Fagundes' too as a protagonist) for the Workers Party in the episode that happened parallel to the 1982 elections in São Paulo - the first to have current Brazil's president Lula running for governor and which had André Franco Montoro as the elected governor - cannot be concealed. The film is the story of Davi Duarte, an idealistic reporter in search of the truth about the puzzling series of crimes in which prostitutes of the neighborhood of Brás are ripped, his clashes with the publisher of the newspaper on the approach adopted for the report - publisher played smoothly by Goulart de Andrade - that can't create a press of his dreams. But he can really help create a press of his nightmares, it seems. The police seems to be willing to make an agreement with the press. And the reporter runs the risk of being used by both to incriminate an innocent. They'd do everything so the culprit could be found. The streets are dirty, they need cleaning. And Davi Duarte starts a race against time to save a young prostitute called Luna, thought to be one of the next on the maniac's list. And to save an innocent from false conviction won't make it less hard for the reporter. Suggesting the use of the episode as a political springboard might not make A Próxima Vítima a rather political film. But for sure it is a film that is well made and built into frantic crescendo as the pursuit of the reporter gets tighter and tighter onto the real killer.
