Benjamim

Instead of focusing on the flaws mentioned by the first reviewer, I'd like to emphasize the fact that this film was very well made. The production is excellent, the photography is beautiful, the acting is good enough (not stellar),and the plot is complex (it is confusing for a reason): Chico Buarque's novel is just as complex, with constant flashbacks which I believe are appropriate to connect past and present. The present is "determined" by the actions of the past.

This sense of the inescapable is central to both Buarque's and this film's meaning(s). One cannot analyze either the film or the novel without some background knowledge of the historical context (Brazil during the 1960s up until the late 1980s). The continuity between the long period of military dictatorship (1964-1985) and the supposed entrance of the country into a "democratic" present, a present which is usually seen as a break with the violent past, are depicted as mirrors of one another through the very structure of the narrative.

Unfortunately, without this historical background, one may find this film a "let down" to quote the first reviewer. This is due to the fact that a casual viewer, seeking merely entertainment, will be in the dark as far as the subtle historical references of the film narrative to both the dictatorship and the post-dictatorship's least visible traits.