Cidade dos Homens (2007)

Following the cult Brazilian TV series "City of Men" (2002-2005), Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha), two orphaned, teenage street kids living in Morro da Sinuca (one of Rio's 600+ favelas), are now about to turn 18 and face the issues of adulthood. Fatherhood -- in a social milieu where most kids grow up fatherless -- is the key theme here: Acerola is a teen dad now and has to take care of his baby boy when his wife moves to São Paulo to work as a babysitter; Laranjinha is on the search of the identity of his unknown father, only to discover he's alive and is ex-convict on parole. On the background, the violent, destitute, crude, lawless, drug-gang controlled life in Rio's favelas.

A sort of mix of Fernando Meirelles' (co-producer here) "City of God" in visual style and Dickens' "Oliver Twist" in spirit, one of the major problems of "City of Men" is its contrived screenplay's solutions: we have to deal with Acerola's impossibly fast discovery of the whereabouts of Laranjinha's father, or his grandmother ending up homeless and abandoned (in the film's phoniest solution). Or trafficker Nefasto suddenly changing sides in the gang war; or Acerola's one-chance-in-a-million spotting trafficker Fiel still alive, or the incredible solution linking Acerola +Laranjinha's fathers in the past, etc.

Director Paulo Morelli (who made the practically unseen "Preço da Paz" and the insipid "Viva Voz", and directed some episodes of the "City of Men" TV series) comes from the publicity world -- and it shows. His images are (too) soigné: the black bodies have a golden shine, with pearly sweat and blazingly white teeth. He adopts the cinéma-vérité style (in the camera-work, dialog, performances) that's now de rigueur in films dealing with "stark realities". Oscar- nominated editor Daniel Rezende ("City of God", "Motorcycle Diaries") tries to keep things moving fast enough so we don't have time to think about plot holes and contrivances. Antonio Pinto's music is beautiful but inexplicably old-fashioned for a movie about and with teenagers. On the positive side, a special mention must go to the superb sound design and effects.

The cast -- most of them from the TV series -- is asked to do more of the same. Douglas Silva (Acerola) relies on his intuitive acting and big fish face. Jonathan Haagensen (as drug lord Madrugadão) again acts with his pout and bare torso in his usual laid back bad-boy style, looking suitably stoned. Babu Santana does his usual scenery-chewing in a bit as a trafficker. Camila Monteiro, Luciano Vidigal (a sensitive actor with an impossible part) and others repeat their TV roles. Eduardo BR as Nefasto suggests a blooming talent; Rodrigo dos Santos as Laranjinha's father has a great movie face, and first-timers Pedro Henrique (Caju) and Naíma Silva (Camila) are sensitively directed. The best is Darlan Cunha as Laranjinha: no-nonsense, witty and resourceful, his deadpan acting is the essence of the "carioca cool".

But there's something bothersome about "Cidade dos Homens": it's hard to concentrate on Acerola's sex troubles or Laranjinha's unlikely instant attachment to his shady father (are Rio's street kids really this naive?) when characters like Caju (the dim-witted, glamor-seeking teenager who joins the drug gang) or those really original characters -- the teenage girls that have been "upgraded" to become gangstas themselves, no longer confined to being "gangsta molls" -- screamed for attention and development. It's weird to take "City of Men" for its face value, i.e. a buddy-buddy movie with the favela drug war on the background. But perhaps Morelli is right: ordinary life somehow does go on even in the most violent realities.

By focusing on the personal problems of Acerola and Laranjinha, director Morelli and writer Elena Soárez ("House of Sand", "Eu Tu Eles", bringing a feminine touch to what could have been a stolid he-man movie) choose to concentrate on plot and characters, using a lot of big close-ups of the kids' faces so we won't be distracted by the hellish favela background -- and yet the "background" jumps right on our laps. Poverty, segregation, racism, drugs, guns and violence, the absence of schools, hospitals, formal employment or government assistance, the dire conditions of life in the favelas that affect 1,5 million people in Rio are, in fact, the cause of most of Acerola and Laranjinha's "personal" problems. Maybe one day we'll all be desensitized enough to take that sort of background as routine scenery, but not right yet.

"City of Men" has a major asset, anyhow: the final scene is lyrical, ingenious and filled with humor -- it's a great finale for the successful series that dared put on Brazilian TV favela teenagers as protagonists, these teenagers who usually just show up in movies and TV (and, many times, and tragically, in real life) as traffickers, junkies, thieves or corpses.