Brazilian Film

The one line description of the film, called Mango Yellow, is that life consists of sex and stomachs. So you get an idea of what it will be like.
Many Brazilian films like to show the underbelly of the country since its elite are on display in the wildly popular soap operas, shown relentlessly from 5:30 to 10:30 every day on the most popular television station, watched by 80% of the country. The opulent lives of the rich and often deplorable characters shown in the soap operas contrast to the physical condition in which most Brazilians live, and it is this side Brazilian filmmakers seem to prefer to portray.
The result is that most Brazilian films can only be made with grants of some form or subsidy, i.e. they don’t make money but are rather patronized. People seem to much prefer to escape into the stories of those better off than them or have two hours where they can watch Tom Cruise hanging from a cliff with two fingers killing multiple bad guys. Despite this, filmmakers here are intent on receiving public subsidies and producing films that hardly anybody, besides critics at obscure film festivals nobody has ever heard of, watches. The French have traditionally been the culture emulated by the Brazilian intelligencia and notions about the utter futility of life rather than the optimistic, American idea of the perfectibility of man are accentuated.
Everything in Mango Yellow happens on one day and revolves around a seedy flophouse, in the city of Recife, the second biggest in Brazil’s northeastern region of around 2 million inhabitants. The city is very much part of the film; some of its best moments are touring around town to a soundtrack of samples of the great and wildly eclectic music produced there. It’s a culturally vibrant place and also a site of many of the world’s shark attacks.
The characters in Mango Yellow lack a certain role model quality. The first scene sets the tone. A woman is filmed, naked and getting out of bed, slinging on a dress (no underwear) and making her way to an adjacent bar, which we assume to be hers as she starts to clean it up. She is blond (maybe a descendent of the Dutch who occupied the city in the 17th century for 25 years) and maybe her one role model quality would be for aspiring fashion models as flesh is all she has.
The bar is messy, there’s a lot of work to be done, and from the Helena’s ensuing monologue, which touches on such existential considerations such as ‘‘life is crazy, during the day it’s lights, at night it’s dark, we live and then we die,” we realize that the picture is not altogether rosy. Her philosophical knowledge seems to have come from unsuccessful self-help books. Helena gets on with her prosaic tasks as the day progresses. The first alcoholic arrives at seven in the morning for a dose of cachaca and appears regularly throughout the day for a top up.
We get to know a middle aged man, Otavio, one of a cast of the flophouse residents that feature in this sanguine film. He is incapable of making a sentence half of which are not swear words, and derives intense sexual pleasure from shooting at bodies of recently dead people (the warmer the better). It is not clear whether he has sex with them, the film doesn’t specify. Certainly that act would likely also be morally acceptable for our hero. For this rather torrid pastime, Otavio provides heaps of pot to a guy who works in a mortuary.
All het up from his latest shooting of a dead person, Otavio takes the supplier of his thrills to Helena’s bar to celebrate. Before they get there, Helena has thrown out two guys who talk about world politics and other intellectual themes while getting outrageously drunk. One had grabbed her and she had struck back like a snake, violently attacking him and cursing his ‘whore’ mother. The expulsion was quick and efficient, the chastened pair, so inebriated as to be barely able to walk, skulked off.
Otavio and his friend are intent on reaching the same level of intoxication as the banished pair and quickly there are many beer bottles besides the table. This Brazilian custom in ‘popular’ restaurants or bars (i.e. which cater to poor people), of leaving the beer bottles at the table so as to avoid accusations of cheating when bills are tallied, is ruthless for giving away the level of drunkenness of the table’s occupants.
Predictably, beer does nothing to sweeten Otavio’s nature and he is soon making outrageously permissive comments to Helena. He asks whether the hair ‘down there’ was also blond and as she sashayed over you remember she has no underwear. She lifts up her leg onto a chair and raises up her skirt. This is full frontal stuff and of a delayed nature not allowed in Hollywood.
Of course Otavio cannot contain his brutish, libidinous nature and tries to accost her at which point the bottles become convenient weapons for her to smash over his head. Mr. Cadaver man quickly splits the scene as Otavio is also repelled with the rage and savagery of Helena. You have to respect her.
Another person we are introduced to is Augusto. He works in a slaughterhouse and we get to see a cow being killed. What a treat. Augusto then goes around in the meat truck and delivers large slabs of meat to supermarkets and hotels. One of the clients is the flop house and Augusto walks into the kitchen to be greeted by the flop house manager who as soon as he popped out of the womb, it was obvious he was gay.
As Augusto cuts the meat, Felipe, in shorts so tight it’s how to imagine how he managed to get them on, taunts him relentlessly and quickly unleashes the side of the macho man who thinks it okay to be the active one, whether with a man or woman. Augusto then goes home to his wife, a born- again full of Christian pudency , thank God according to Augusto, and they eat bread, cheese and drink coffee.
Not only is he sodomizing Felipe, but Augusto also makes eternal promises to Eva, his lover, that he will give up his wife for her. For this, he gets to sleep with her though she swears she will leave him but never does. Felipe, now falling in love with Augusto, and conveniently friends with Eva the lover, arranges for the Christian wife to catch Augusto with Eva up to no good later that evening.
This duly happens, and the born again, in that gesture of female solidarity so common here in South America, immediately attacks the woman and, drawing inspiration from Mike Tyson, bites part of her ear off. It’s a bloody scene. This acts has dislodged Jesus from her heart and on her way home, overtaken by the deadly sin of lust, she gets picked up by the guy who shoots (and maybe screws) cadavers. Their ensuing, wildly ribald tryst confirms her utter abandonment of chaste and obedience to God.
The hotel owner dies, leaving Felipe distraught in a very stereotypical gay way, i.e. endless screaming and carrying on. No one has money, or is willing to give money, to buy a coffin for the wretched owner. It is here we get to know more about the fat woman who never leaves her room and refuses to give a cent toward a dignified burial for the newly deceased owner.
She hints at how bad she has been, pointing out that her family, perfectly decent people, want nothing to do with her. Her breathing is impaired, and for this she constantly is using an oxygen mask. Our parting scene is with her rolling about on the ground with the oxygen mask most definitely not on her mouth but rather glued to her private area, the sounds of her moans more like an old dog than erotic in any way.
The plot, such as it is, is circular. In the end we are back with Helena, who just can’t take it anymore and whales balefully at the injustices of life as she picks up beer bottles and empties ashtrays. I am told the director has produced an even more bleak movie, where life and a sewer are basically interchangeable. I look forward to it.