Cat's Cradle

In São Paulo, the upper middle class teenagers Cristiano, Chico and Gabriel have just joined the university and on the eve of the opening class, they go to a party with drugs and booze. On the next day, after their classes, the date of Cristiano in the previous night comes to his house and the three friends rape the girl. The girl dies, they panic and decide to get rid off the body, but Cristiano's mother arrives, startles with Gabriel and rolls the staircase, breaking her neck. The trio decides to dump and burn the corpses in a garbage landfill, but along the night other tragedies happen.

The polemic and shameful "Cama de Gato" is an overrated pretentious crap about alienation of the youth, and is certainly the worst Brazilian movie that I have seen along many years. The shallow, tragic and dark story is actually a black humor comedy of bad taste. The screenplay is not funny, with stupid lines and dialogs, and boring, manipulative and silly footages with interviews with morons teenagers in the beginning and in the end. The acting is terrible, apparently with many improvisations, but no talent, and I was disappointed with presence of the promising Caio Blat in this trash. The camera, framing, cinematography and edition are amateurish and of very low quality. The sound is awful and in many parts it is impossible to understand what the actors and actresses are speaking (probably it is a plus, since this flick sucks). The gang bang is very realistic and used to promote this mediocre movie in a very poor marketing of sex-exploitation. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Cama de Gato" ("Bed of the Cat")

I took the DVD by chance to home and had a wonderful surprise. Well, there were some good reviews made by critics from important Brazilian papers and that was the only reason why I decided to watch it. But, anyway, it didn't look very attractive to me at first sight.

After the first 20 minutes, I thought "Damn, it's just another movie about teenagers snorting coke and stuff like that". However, in the end of the movie, I was just like: "Jesus! How could this man make such a great film with so little money?!" It's obvious that a film with practically no resources (13,000 Brazilian Reais, what, in 2002, was about 4,000 US dollars) has its defects. The photography lacks quality and some dialogues are unnecessary. But these "problems" only contribute to bring us the "Audacity" that Alexandre Stockler looks for. The Brazilian director created a manifesto called TRAUMA (in English, Trying to Realize Anything Urgent with a Minimum of Audacity). In Cat's Cradle there's certainly much more than a "Minimum of Audacity". Using black humor and social criticism, Stockler alerts us about how sadly nihilistic and hedonistic our society became. Although the movie may sound pessimistic, its realization shows the director's belief that it's still time to think what we want from our lives. Let's wait for Alphavella, Stockler's next project.

*If you have the DVD at home, take a look on the extras where you'll find an interview with the director and the complete interviews with young people which appear during the beginning and the end of the movie.

"Cama de Gato" shot with practically no money, is the first feature lenght film from director Alexandre Stockler, and it covers one wild night in the life of three teenagers and the terrible consequences arisen from their what they consider "fun".

While the necessity of such a film is dire, and it its pacing and mise én scene works remarkably well for such a small picture, the lack of preparation the actors had great hurts the experience.

The portrayal of the three teenagers is stereotyped, bi-dimensional, unrealistic and even childish at times. The three are rarely believable, including the experienced Caio Blat.

One again, this film shows us how Brazil is filled with courageous and creative Directors, who unfortunately don't pay enough attention to the acting in their films. This is a prime example of why "City of God" appealed to so many and why other films don't.

Overall, a worthy attempt. I shall be patiently waiting for other films related to the TRAUMA manifesto.

6.5/10

Cama de Gato (2002), is a proper shoestring indie movie set in Sao Paulo. First time (film) writer-director Alexandre Stockler created a script by exaggerating a number of real life events which occurred in Sao Paulo into a complex moral dilemma for three upper-middle class teens, which plays out over a number of hours on one evening. Though some of the cinematic effects are questionable and does not contribute to the atmosphere, storyline or artistic effect, the different subjective flashbacks which each teen had of the event which led to the start of the moral dilemma worked pretty well. As such the core story and the nihilistic message is conveyed powerfully. The impact of the class differential on the morality of actions is fortunately only touched upon lightly (though in act 1 it appeared as a principal theme to be explored). Stockler's T. R. A. U. M. A '99 manifesto (basically an ironic response to Von Tier & Kie' s Dogme 95 manifesto) is mostly likely the driving force behind the overpaying of class disparacy in a somewhat disjointed manner. This is said as the teens react in a manner in which teens likely could act when met with such events, ie try to get rid of the evidence and hope the entire mess goes away. True to the title, the film is a cats cradle (made through the currency of the film). Directing and scripting was exceptional, especially on an estimated budget of $ 5000. The use of certain music worked okay to convey a satirical effect to the horror of the events but it also had a bit of a slapstick feel. Cinematography was decent enough, even if regard is not had to the limited budget. As with all low budget indie movies, the acting was a mixed bag of really good and really pretty bad. Overall despite many shortcomings , the film worked really well. 7/10.

Cama De Gato (Cat's Cradle) is the best Brazilian film I've seen in the last 10 years. It's very deep and still very funny, like the Brazilian society is, with all it's problems but still a great country with great people, but probably the worst politicians on earth. Cama De Gato does not try to show the things differently as they are in reality, it makes philosophy with the ordinary life of three young upper middle class teenagers that get into big troubles just because they were looking for a "bit of fun"... Very impressive and important film to understand a little more about this very complex society. Simply the best. I'm very interested in Alexandre Stockler's next project.