The Brazilian pornochchada are an interesting genre of films that someone (someone fluent in Portugese) really ought to write about. It is a truly strange genre--part softcore porn, part Brazilian-flavored telenovela with an often truly jaw-dropping lack of modern-day "political correctness". But even by the standards of the "chada" genre, this movie is particularly bizarre. It starts off with a young man secretly watching his sexy sister frolicking naked in the surf. He then gets so turned on that he has sex with a goat(!) while his sister secretly watches HIM. So far, this is EXACTLY what I would expect from a Brazilian pornochachada, but then it starts to get weird.
The two siblings are the offspring of a lonely woman whose husband is missing at sea. The two younger characters are named Ulisses and Cassandra, and the story takes place on a very beautiful but strangely deserted section of beach, which suggests more Homer's "Odyssey" and the mythical Greek land of Ithaca than 80's-era Brazil. Obviously, this movie has some lofty artistic pretensions, but it is at least somewhat more successful--and certainly less annoying--than some other pretentious Brazilian movies of that era like "Love Strange Love". Brazilian cinema was famous at that time for stealing copyrighted popular music and incorporating it in a usually very inappropriate and obtrusive manner. Keeping with its general level of artiness, this movie instead borrows CLASSICAL music from Beethoven and Greig(and incorporates it in an inappropriate and obtrusive matter).
The drama begins when a mysterious stranger shows up and claims the husband is dead (kind of taking on the role of Penelope's "suitors"). It's intimated he may have had something to do with the murder of the husband, and he definitely has a sinister agenda, seducing both the wife and daughter and playing on the son's jealously and incestuous desire for his sister. The film really moves back to exploitation at this point as it takes the stranger mere minutes of screen-time to engage the mother and daughter in hot sex (he bends the daughter over a rock and takes her from behind as her brother perversely watches). It becomes pretty apparent (when they're both naked) that the "mother" and "daughter" are pretty much the same age and, at this point, the more conventional porn fantasy scenario really overwhelms the serious, artistic drama. Most of the actors, unfortunately, are closer to porn-level in their acting ability and their characters seem to lack genuine relationships with each other or much believable motivation. The sinister stranger is a promising character, but even he spends most of his role balls deep in the female cast, which doesn't allow for much character development. Still, while this eventually fails as either art or serious drama, it IS much more interesting than your typical softcore porn. And like a lot of Brazilian "chadas", it is certainly worth checking out.
