Brazil 2005
Directed by
Sérgio Machado
95 minutes
Rated MA
Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
Lower City
Synopsis: Best friends since childhood, Deco (Lázaro Ramos) and Naldinho (Wagner Moura) a couple of young street-wise dudes who get by financially by carrying goods in their boat but never straying far from the petty criminal world of their younger years in Salvador. The along comes Karinna (Alice Braga) a desirable but tough 20-year-old who makes her living as a whore and everything goes to hell.
Winner of the Prix De La Jeunesse at Cannes in 2005 and touted as “the new City Of God”, Sérgio Machado’s debut feature falls far short of that film either as drama or sociology, making nothing of note out of its ménage-a-trois set-up and failing to achieve the fatalistic poignancy to which it purports.
The main problem is in the unimaginative script whose shortcomings are compounded by unfortunate sub-titling. Throughout the course of the film Karinna indifferently drifts between the two friends whilst in the meantime prostituting herself, equally indifferently it seems. Braga (who is niece to Sonia Braga) may be bootylicious but one is unable to tell whether her lack of animation is acting or the absence of it. This mood of dumbness, which perhaps is intended to be understood as intellectual and spiritual stuntedness, pervades the script. Thus when Karinna tells Naldinho that she is pregnant, his response is “Phat”. When one of her collegues at the bar where she works as a pole dancer/hostess offers to arrange an abortion, Karinna’s answer is, yes, “Phat”. No doubt this is unfortunate sub-titling but the inarticulation is typical of the film as a whole and sits uneasily with the characters of the three, perhaps uneducated but far from unintelligent, protagonists, whilst for the audience it provides nothing with which to engage.
Machado films much of the story at night in dark alleys and dimly-lit nightclubs. This is an effective cost-cutting measure and may serve to mask the limitations of his actors but only serves to compound the general lack of definition and contrast that characterizes the film in so many respects, but most importantly in the relationship between Karinna and the two friends to whom she is allegedly so compulsively drawn. Whilst it would be unfair to compare Lower City with fine films by experienced directors dealing with a similar subject, such as Truffaut’s Jules And Jim and Robert Guediguian’s Marie-Jo And Her Two Lovers, it nevertheless needed more development to succeed dramatically whilst the tacked-on images during the end-titles do not, on the other hand, validate it as a slice-of-life-in-the-ghetto story.
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