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Carandiru

2004, Movie, R, 148 mins

Carandiru: Review

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The law of the street dominates veteran Brazilian filmmaker Hector Babenco's loose adaptation of Dr. Drauzio Varella's fictionalized 1999 memoir Carandiru Station as surely as it does Fernando Meirelles' electrifying CITY OF GOD (2002). The difference: Rio de Janeiro's cidade de deus is a slum so isolated it might as well be a penitentiary, while Sao Paolo's Carandiru is a penitentiary so unmanageable it's essentially a slum with bars. This episodic collection of overlapping tales opens in the 1980s, as a principled doctor (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos) volunteers to teach AIDS prevention and provide general medical care to Carandiru inmates. Once he gets past his ferocious-looking patients' tattoos and swaggering attitudes and they decide he's okay, the prisoners begin to share the stories of their lives in and out of prison. Soft-spoken cellblock boss Ebony (Ivan De Almeida), perpetually stressed-out by the pressure of adjudicating his fellow inmates' endless beefs, is a devoted family man who landed in jail after a botched robbery. Highness (Ailton Graca) runs the drug trade in his cellblock, but devotes most of his energy to juggling the lacerating affections of his wife (Maria Luisa Mendonca) and girlfriend (Aida Leiner); visiting day is always fiery. Zico (Wagner Moura), Deusdete (Caio Blat) and Deusdete's sister, Franci (Julia Ianina), were raised together after Zico's mother abandoned him; Zico went to jail for dealing and Deusdete later joins him, having gunned down two thugs who molested Franci. But Zico's drug-fueled paranoia bodes badly for their future. Tiny, troll-like No Way (Gero Camilo) embarks on a grand romance with towering transgendered beauty Lady Di (Rodrigo Santoro). Middle-aged Miro (Ricardo Blat), who's dying of tuberculosis, is reunited with his old partner in crime Antonio (Floriano Peixoto) years after Miro's faithless wife (Leona Cavalli) sabotaged their friendship and shamelessly betrayed her husband. Together their stories comprise a kaleidoscopic mosaic of poverty, violence and fierce loyalties that mirror the society that spawned them. Babenco came to international attention in 1980 with PIXOTE, a scorching look at the brutal lives of abandoned Brazilian street children, and the real-life Carandiru House of Detention was so notorious that it was demolished in 2002. So it's shocking — far more shocking than the stabbing, fistfights and lethal scaldings — that this film's rhythms suggest nothing so much as a weirdly macho telenovela, full of family drama, isn't-it-ironic humor and maudlin twists of cruel fate. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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