Review of Linha de Passe (2008) by Alan W — 20 Sep 2008

Brazilian cinema and the favelas seem to have gone hand in hand since Fernando Mereillesâ?? City of God electrified the international screen. Now after having journeyed up and down Latin America through the eyes of a young Che Guevara, taken a mis-step into Hollywood Horror and a brief detour in Paris, Walter Salles returns to his roots with fellow co-director Daniela Thomas (who directed together a segment from Paris Je Tâ??aime) in city of Sao Paolo following the lives of a long-suffering mother and her four sons each struggling as the underbelly population to find a way to live and follow their dreams, as such.

Stripped of romantic or other glamorous stylistic choices, Salles and Thomas convey these rough and delicate lives with a raw warmth that unfortunately donâ??t hold together quite as well as one would hope.

Itâ??s in a way nice not to have any contrived connections to propel a story as such, which have been the strengths and now hindrances of Guillermo Arriaga, but the erratic cuts of each personâ??s narrative path, from the youngest Reginaldo obsessing with identifying a black bus driver who may be his biological father, to Dinhoâ??s trials of keeping the faith as a born-again evangelical, are frustrating in that we donâ??t really know where theyâ??re trying to go.

In some ways, this is less drama and really just a fly-on-the-wall drop into the life of a family in the slums. Perhaps the only person who directly relates to the film title (translated as Offside) is Dario, who looks capable of nothing except to make it as a footballer.

Unfortunately, having just turned eighteen, itâ??s depressing and frustrating for him to feel already past it, needing to fake his ID to be only within a scrap of chance to be picked by the ruthless and corrupt talent scouts.

Though his arrogance at times makes him dislikeable, his situations are all to easy to empathise with, as a young man whose dreams appear to be fading away yet totally incapable of adapting to the working world (I can certainly empathise when he idly browses an agency window where all the job opportunities require 1 or 2 years experience that he obviously doesnâ??t have, and wouldnâ??t know how to acquire).

Itâ??s however Sandra Corveloni who won the Cannes prize playing the boysâ?? long-suffering mother, also expecting another baby during the film, yet itâ??s a shame she has so little screen time. Salles and Thomas may have technically provided some accomplished filmmaking that brings back the verite of cinema, but with screen time split five ways in an already long running time, some of the characters are sadly short-changed, perhaps much like their lives.