I Remember

"Eu Me Lembro" is a strange portrait of a time or place which completely leaves out characters, even including the character who is supposed to be sharing this portrait with us. It's one of those movies that feels like nothing really happens in it. It never grabs us or makes us feel anything.

Some aspects of the time depicted are sort of namechecked, such as the military dictatorship in Brazil, where the movie is set. But what do the characters think about it? You could get the same effect watching a newsreel. The fact that the information is relayed to us through characters we can't even name, or remember if we've seen them in prior scenes, deadens the impact. We need to see their reactions to gauge the seriousness of the situation, and it sounds rather serious. They don't react, or the director forgets to show it.

Everything blends into everything else in this movie. Nothing is underlined except maybe the protagonist's interest in sex. There are a couple of graphic masturbation scenes in the movie. But what about the rest of it? What are the character's hopes and dreams? What does he want to be when he grows up? Who is he, anyway? What is his personality? And his family: who are they?

And what was the point of the hallucinatory ending? The character discovers sex, and then he discovers weed. Not much of a character arc.

Brazilian director Edgar Navarro remembers his life as a boy, a youth and a somewhat man in rural Bahia.

While this film is lovingly shot--as only such autobiographical films such as this tend to be written--the themes and memories depicted in this film meander to the point of misdirection.

The man's early life stands out in the film clearly for its use of archetypes, as in the mother and, particularly, depiction of the father. Guiga's father is as many Brazilian fathers were, as my own familial history illustrates. It's just that the filmic representation of this personal history seems mired in cliché, and even what seemed a sort of confused plagiarism.

The depictions of Guiga's sexual development were equally cute and bizarre, and there were a few moments of genuine hilarity--as in a menopausal tribute to Brasil itself--but the familial imagery wears thin and Guiga's personal development isn't at all inspiring or passionate; this seems a man's nostalgic vision of himself having a perfectly normal and uneventful life.

The visual and thematic ties to the factual history of Brasil also confuse, for as soon as their reality grip the viewer, so do the questions one asks regarding their inclusion in the film. Navarro 'remembers' the military takeover of the Brazilian government and subsequent revolution attempts, but only for a brief moment. These events are not portrayed in any certain depth, and their inclusion without adequate thematic or historical explanation will most probably confuse or in their brutality irritate most non-Brazilian audiences.

And concerning Guiga's personal response to the events that occur around his life--and I must emphasize the use of 'around' here, as Guiga himself takes not a step toward actually involving himself in historic circumstance--I must say that I've seen it all before, and once again I'm speaking from personal experience.

I mean: I've seen drugs done on cinema. I've seen them done on cinema much better--Hell, I've DONE better drugs than this film. And as the final bizarre hallucination unreeled--in all its Fellini Glory--I couldn't help but wonder, "why?".

I hoped that I would enjoy this film, but the ending really changed what had come before. Navarro's inclusion of the ending from 8 1/2--sem musica theatrica--seems really tacked-on, as if Navarro himself was confused to the true purpose of the memoir.

"Eu Me Lembro" means "I Remember" in Portuguese, a title which recalls, of course, Fellini's "Amarcord". There are also paraphrases of other Fellini films ("Otto e Mezzo", "I Vitelloni", "...E La Nave Va") and Kusturica ("When Father Was Away on Business", "Underground") in Edgar Navarro's award-winning feature début at 56 (!!), which uses autobiographical memoirs/dreams of his childhood, adolescence and youth. Navarro shows his alter-ego Guiga going through funny/startled/clumsy/painful discoveries on sex, religion (Catholic guilt is all important here), death, love, politics, drugs and art, and above all his relationship with his flamboyant family. Like Fellini and Kusturica, Navarro makes great use of music, wacko characters and sense of humor to create a magical, dreamlike piece of nostalgia, overcoming his tiny budget and making one of the year's most endearing, personal and lyrical films.

We follow Guiga from about 5 to 20-something years of age, living in (then still) provincial Salvador (capital of the state of Bahia) from the 1950s up to the 1970s. Born into a Catholic middle-class family with a strict father, an oppressed but loving mother, a bunch of siblings and a golden-hearted housemaid, Guiga's offbeat behavior in his early childhood makes the best part of the film: a candid and very funny account of early sexuality (including masturbation scenes that may startle people who pretend Freud never existed and believe children are asexual) and the delights and pains of growing up.

Navarro uses Brazilian political history as Guiga's background -- the democratic, hopeful, confident atmosphere of late 1950s; the trauma of the military coup in the 1960s culminating in the violent, repressive 1970s, the "lead years", when imprisonment, torture and murder were a permanent and very real threat for students, intellectuals, artists and political activists. The film loses momentum in the (overlong) third part, as now grown-up Guiga fails to cope with the heavy political repression, the death of his beloved mother and some kind of sexual shortcoming that isn't quite clear (probably sterility), becoming increasingly erratic and emotionally unstable. Guiga chooses to "drop out" into flower-power, communal life and drugs -- and the film loses some of its magic as Guiga loses his Amarcordian family. But overall, "Eu Me Lembro" remains a enchanting journey filled with poetry, originality and humor, an unbeatable recipe.

"Eu Me Lembro" has winning assets: a) a spot-on art direction, filled with Brazilian middle-class memorabilia of the 1950s and 1960s, which probably only Brazilians over 40 will fully enjoy; b) a soundtrack that sets the film's intense emotional tone and includes Brazilian hits from the 1940s to the 1970s (Carmen Miranda, Emilinha Borba, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, the great and forgotten Gilberto Alves etc), classical music (there's a beautiful scene where Guiga plays Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody n.2 in a radio show) and lovely traditional Bahia folk songs; c) colorful, offbeat dialog (the opening scene between Guiga and his mother, and the "BBC" routine by Maria Maluca are highlights), delivered in that sensuous, mellifluous Bahia accent; d) fine acting, especially from Arly Arnaud (warm and appealing as the Mother), Fernando Neves (making us care for the pathetic Father) and the galvanizing Dantlen Mello as the youngest Guiga, with big curious eyes belying his deadpan expression.

The fact that it took 30 years (!!) for director Edgar Navarro to get his first feature financed, produced and exhibited (he has been making award- winning shorts and videos since the 1970s), just adds to the importance of "Eu Me Lembro": because he's had to wait decades to take his story to the big screen, he has painted a self-portrait that's also a portrait of a whole generation (middle-class Brazilians who are now pushing 60), a generation whose early hopes were stifled by violent military regimes, censorship and the death of utopia. It's also a story of survival: non-heroic, non- extraordinary, and with a bit of sanity and confidence lost along the way, but survival anyway. The delicate, symbolic, life-celebrating finale (à la "8 1/2") restates the importance of keeping our dreams and memories alive, even (especially?) in somber times, because they may be the best we've got left to tell the world when darkness is finally over.