"The corpse of a man killed trying to rob the place days earlier lies in the dirt nearby, covered by a hunk of cardboard. The local cops roll up before Armando can depart and harass him, presumably because he's driving a Beetle and has a beard. Armando keeps his cool and continues on his way, Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" coming out his car's speakers as he arrives in the northeastern city of Recife,"
"That juxtaposition of realistic, politically pointed drama (Armando is in fact on the run) and surreal eruptions of genre continues for the entire lengthy but justified running time of director Kleber Mendonça Filho's film, one of the front-runners for this year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Armando, using an alias, arrives at a safe house run by the venerable Dona Sebastiana (the wonderful Tânia Maria),"
The film is set in Brazil in 1977 and follows Armando, a fugitive who arrives at an isolated Esso station and then to Recife while a corpse and a human leg in a shark hint at violent chaos. The narrative juxtaposes grounded political drama with absurd, genre-driven eruptions: a safe house run by Dona Sebastiana, a couple from Angola, a two-faced cat, and Armando's attempt to reclaim his son. A father-stepson hit-man duo pursues him, and the film includes extreme anomalies such as a resurrected severed limb and a Udo Kier appearance. The film uses cinematic tropes to illuminate politically charged themes and emphasizes the absurdity of life under repressive political conditions.
Read at Oregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
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