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Midnight

2000, Movie, NR, 72 mins

Midnight: Review

MIDNIGHT | FIRST DAY, THE | LE PREMIER JOUR | MEIA NOITE | MINUIT | O PRIMEIRO DIA
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From Walter Salles, director of 1998's CENTRAL STATION, and his frequent collaborator Daniela Thomas, comes this minor but touching tale of death and salvation at the dawn of the new millennium. It's December 31, 1999, and time is running out for two Brazilians separated by class and circumstances, but united by chance during the final moments of the 20th century. As the rest of Rio de Janeiro prepares for the party of a lifetime, Joao (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos), a prisoner, strikes a bargain with the corrupt prison guards. They'll help him escape, but Joao must agree to kill his old friend Chico (Matheus Nachtergaele), a police snitch who's been naming names and sending his cronies to jail. Joao agrees, but naively miscalculates the outcome. Meanwhile, in another part of town, the life of upper-middle-class speech therapist Maria (Fernanda Torres) is turned upside down when her depressed boyfriend suddenly disappears. Maria's thrown into a suicidal depression, and as midnight approaches she makes arrangements to kill herself. Salles and Thomas originally produced this hour-long film as part of the millennial project "2000 as Seen By...," in which a wide range of international filmmakers were asked to produce films set during the final days of the 20th century (other entries in the series include Don McKellar's LAST NIGHT and Hal Hartley's THE BOOK OF LIFE). In the case of Salles and Thomas's film, the millennium itself doesn't mean much. Despite the mystical pronouncements of Joao's cellmate Vovo (Nelson Sargento), a lifer who predicts that when the one becomes two and the nines become zeros everything will change, nothing is really at stake. The film's real transformations occur within characters who are entirely oblivious to the rollover, who reach out to one another with a compassion of which they've been capable all along. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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