Fome de Amor

In "Fome de Amor" ("Hunger for Love"), Alfredo (Paulo Porto), deaf, dumb and blind ex-revolutionary and his free-spirited wife Ulla (Leila Diniz) are on their seaside house and are visited by another couple : Mariana, a young frustrated pianist (Irene Stefânia) and her untrustworthy husband Felipe (Arduíno Colasanti). The two couples examine their relationships and experiment with swinging, with a lot of existentialist/revolutionary (gun traffic) issues and some nudity thrown in.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos, one of Brazil's all-time great filmmakers ("Rio 40 Graus", "Vidas Secas", "Boca de Ouro", "Memórias do Cárcere" etc) has less fortunate results with this very symbolic and hermetic "Fome de Amor" ("Hunger for Love"), in a time of extreme censorship in Brazil because of the military regime.

It was also a time for new directions for the Cinema Novo movement, which had abandoned the early-times "naïf" motives (the sertão, the macumba, the favelas) and moved nearer to the real background of the filmmakers themselves (politically concerned intellectuals -artists of bourgeois extraction). 'Fome de Amor" belongs with other NPSantos's films searching experimental techniques and story-telling (e.g. "Quem é Beta?"), and demands an unconventional and attentive audience.

The dialogues alternate from intelligent to codified to hammy, from explosive to plain boring. The cast, though, is quite good, with veteran Paulo Porto, male heartthrob Arduíno Colasanti looking good, but most of all the lovely leading ladies who are a knockout: curvaceous and wonderful 23 year-old Leila Diniz, Brazil's greatest sex symbol of the late 60s/early 70s (who died tragically in a plane crash in 1972) and lovely 20-year-old Irene Stefânia. If you get a chance to see "Fome de Amor" you maybe frustrated with the film's symbolic language, but you certainly won't be let down by these two beautiful stars. My vote: 5 out of 10.