"The Other Side of Paradise" records a boy's point of view on the dictatorship.
Brasília is a political, architectural, and urban dream made of concrete, where the dreams of the Brazilian people should be realized, but almost never are; the father of the Minas Gerais writer Luiz Fernando Emediato was one of the dreamers who went there, hopeful, to help in its construction, but discovered, on the eve of the 1964 coup, "The Other Side of Paradise"; this is the title given to the short story written in homage to his father, Antônio Trindade, which became the eponymous film by André Ristum, in which Emediato is also a producer and character.
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brasília is a political, architectural, and urban dream made of concrete, where the dreams of the Brazilian people should be realized, but almost never are. The father of the Minas Gerais writer Luiz Fernando Emediato was one of the dreamers who went there, hopeful, to help in its construction; but they discovered, on the eve of the 1964 coup, "The Other Side of Paradise" (2014).
This is the title given to the short story written in homage to his father, Antônio Trindade, which was transformed into the eponymous feature film by André Ristum, in which Emediato is also a producer and character.
As an alter ego of the journalist and editor Davi Galdeano, he embodies the boy Nando, whose father (Eduardo Moscovis) is always searching for that paradise on earth, the land of Evilath that his father Antônio read about in the Bible.
This time, the promise of happiness lies in Brasília, and the head of the family takes his wife Nancy (Simone Iliescu) and their three children from the interior of Minas Gerais to Taguatinga, a satellite city where the construction workers of the new capital live.
But the change is painful for the boy, still caught up in his first loves: he left little Alice (Tais Andrade) in the village, while at his new address he found books and the rebellious Iara (Maju Souza).
Besides the father-son relationship, the theme of Ristum's previous film, "My Country" (2011), the fictional approach to the moment of the coup was an attractive aspect of the project for the director. Born abroad, after his parents left Brazil in 1967 due to repression and only returned after the Amnesty, André had already portrayed the period in the documentary "Time of Resistance" (2003). Here, the beloved paternal figure, sympathetic to the Jango government and union causes, becomes a target of the military.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the film adopts the boy's perspective on that turbulent period, which, in turn, clearly recalls Cao Hamburger's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" (2006), although it bears more resemblance to the Chilean film "Machuca" (2004) and the Argentinian film "Kamchatka" (2002).
The choice captivates the audience, but by giving the protagonist a desire for political books and an adult voice in unnecessary voice-overs, the filmmaker compromises a certain innocence and possibilities from a child's point of view, without delving into the political context.
Despite the off-screen scenes of the young man writing letters to his beloved, in which Galdeano doesn't perform as well as he does on screen, the actor shows promise. Similarly, even though it borders on melodrama, the direction doesn't dwell on it and only generates more empathy for the characters than in the extremely restrained "My Country".
And the script by Marcelo Müller, along with José Rezende, Ricardo Tiezzi, and Ristum, forces a relationship between the boy's sister (Camila Márdila, from "Que Horas Ela Volta?") and a military man, without taking advantage of the richness of this character.
In any case, André achieves a very positive result in this film, which won an award from the audience in Gramado, by mixing the playful – such as Du Moscovis's performance or the unprecedented and ethereal song "Ventos Irmãos," sung by Milton Nascimento – with his neorealist influences.
He uses previously unseen material from French photographer Jean Manzon alongside images from the short documentary “Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova” (1968), by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, from which he even “painted” a bus in post-production to integrate his period reconstruction into the environment of the archival images.
The curious thing is that Joaquim Pedro's short film was censored by the military regime precisely for highlighting the disparity between the modernity of Brasília and the isolated reality of the construction workers who made it possible, although so many, like Seu Antônio, who reflects the same contradiction here, do not allow themselves to stop dreaming of their paradise.
(By Nayara Reynaud, from Cineweb)
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