If you want to know more about Brazilian history, this film is not a good choice, as it has no commitment to historical facts, although inspired in real characters and events such as Brazilian "citizen Kane" Assis Chateaubriand and former president Getúlio Vargas. Though, if you like innovative movies which play with the different possibilities to tell a story on the big screen, then "Chatô" is an awesome opportunity! It is a very interesting piece of funny magical realism with some traits of surrealism, reminding me top directors such as Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. While the former Monty Python member has a crazier approach and the French moviemaker's approach is sweeter, Guilherme Fontes shows a more aggressive and sensual one. Overacting is a conscious and successful choice of him, composing a fable of a major and polemic character. The story is not linear, as many events may happen only in his mind, inside his dreams or perhaps in an alternative reality. Some of the top Brazilian actors have been casted and it was important to keep the film's high quality in spite of its campiness. The movie could receive an even better grade if it were a bit shorter and kept the same pace throughout it, as it tires a little at some point. Besides its quality, the film also interests because of its troubled production. Brazilian actor Guilherme Fontes kept public funding 20 years before in order to direct his very first movie, but he got broken and people thought the film would never be finished and that he would be put in jail. He still faces court proceedings trying not to pay the money back. In the final credits, Fontes complains of having suffered censorship, what is obviously not the case. Anyway, the movie has finally been released and that is very good news for Brazilian cinema.
