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Bossa Nova

2000, Movie, R, 95 mins

Bossa Nova: Review

Pretty, frivolous and utterly inconsequential, the nicest thing about this romantic comedy is that it revolves around a group of characters in their 30s, 40s and older who are fools for love, without making them look like old fools. Mary Ann (Amy Irving), a widowed American English teacher living in Rio de Janeiro, has given up on love, but love has most certainly not given up on her. She's not interested in the lewd attentions of private student Acacio (Alexandre Borges), a world-class soccer player who's just been sold to a Manchester team and has to brush up on his trash talk. But she's intrigued by Pedro Paulo (Antonio Fagundes), a middle-aged, not-quite-divorced lawyer whose wife Tania (Deborah Block) left him for her Tai-Chi instructor. Mary Ann's best friend is another student, Nadine (Drica Moraes), who's deeply enmeshed in an online romance with an American named Gary, who claims to be a handsome SoHo artist. And Pedro Paulo's new intern Sharon (Giovanna Antonelli) is flirting with his half brother Roberto (Pedro Cardoso); Roberto works with their father, Juan (Alberto de Mendoza), in his high-end tailor shop, and Pedro Paulo is handling Juan's fifth divorce. The Brazilian tourist board should highlight this love letter to Rio — where director Bruno Barreto was born — as part of its promotional packages. The city looks breathtakingly lovely, the movie's Brazilian characters are charming and filled with joie de vivre, and using excerpts would take care of the fact that the pacing's a bit sluggish for such fluffy material. Were she not the director's wife, Irving wouldn't be the obvious choice for the role of Mary Ann; there's a hardness to her that doesn't really suit the character, particularly in a couple of ill-considered fantasy sequences. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh