Madame Satã

As a Dutchman it is hard to judge the historical content of the film. What I've seen was very interesting. Considering the fact it is made after a true story it makes it even more special. The film covers many aspects of life in Brazil in the thirties. Although it is often shown in broad lines it's convinces me. It made me think of the class struggle in my own country. In Dutch you say: als je voor een dubbeltje geboren bent wordt je nooit een kwartje (when you are born as a nickel you'll never become a quarter. In a way it is an optimistic movie. Despite of all the setbacks and jail sentences, the main character does not get broken. Madame Satá becomes a real success winning several prices in carnival parades and other events. I truly admire the actors, especially Lázaro Ramos who plays stunning. The camera-work is great. The special effects are modest and well done. The music in the film is beautiful. I really enjoyed this movie. This movie deserves a wide audience.

João Francisco dos Santos was a real life Rio drag queen or effeminate performer in the Thirties and Forties who was a singer and dancer and a fighter and lover who went to prison many times in his 76-year life including ten years for murder, yet came out after that long stretch and immediately won the prize for the best costume in Carnaval, a boldly spectacular one based on Cecil B. De Mille's character `Madam Satan.' Ainouz's first film features a fiery, committed performance by the actor Lázaro Ramos. The movie's look is important and evocative: the images are uniformly dark and contrasty, not unlike some of Chris Doyle's glorious ones for Wong Kar Wai, with the color dropped down here so far it looks like tinted black and white, and this creates a vivid Brazilian Thirties look. You can smell the cheap perfumes and cologne and the brilliantine on the slicked back hair, and the sweat and the blood and the tears.

João epitomizes and transcends a type of tough, resilient, talented black `sissy' who's no less a man for being attracted to men. Born to slaves and sold as a child, he was consumed by a rage that only strutting and performing could relieve. João lives with what he calls a `limp queen' (Taboo, played by Flavio Bauraqui) whom he protects but often scorns, and a woman whom he's saved and who loves him (Laurita, Marcélia Cartaxo). The other member of the household is Laurita's baby girl. They all live in the low, sinister 'bohemian'quarter of Rio known as Lapa.

For a time João works as a theatrical assistant at a club where he mouths the French lyrics of the chanteuse and her recitation of a pastiche of the 1001 Nights - till he attacks her for being cruel and condescending to him and fights off a half dozen cops and then flees after robbing the club owner for not paying his salary. He has already connected with a lover, Renatinho (Felipe Marquez), a small, pretty light skinned man (and a petty thief) who begs João to show him how to fight. More than once João fends off surrounding teams of heavies or cops like some curious cross-dressing forerunner of Bruce Lee.

Madam Satã progresses through a series of darkly etched vignettes. The subdued lighting causes scenes to flicker out as if candles had burned away or the electricity had failed. At first it may seem as though there's not much here but atmosphere, ample though that may be, and because he's so rejected and lowly, João's flamboyant theatricality in every action begins to seem rather fruitless. But every encounter is intense - the vignette format aids in that effect -especially the love and war clashes between João and his `Indian prince,' Renatinho - and there's a strong sense of how this brave, irrepressible man lived his life. On first meeting the two snort coke and kiss in the club restroom and Renatinho follows João home fawningly after observing his courage, asking for fighting lessons all the way.

Another strong relationship is with Laurita, and still another is with Amadór, owner of the much friendlier bar where João eventually blossoms as a macho reincarnation of Josephine Baker. When these performances begin, the movie finally bursts fully into life and all its promises of repressed talent and latent theatrical exoticism are powerfully, if only momentarily, fulfilled.

Provocation by a little homophobic drunk after one of these performances by João follows, and João goes out and shoots the little bigot in the street. His arraignment for this murder frames the movie, but the narrative of his later years follows as a coda, with a voiceover during a highly abstracted set of red hued images of João dancing a kind of Samba tarantella in his spectacular long satanic Carnaval costume. The closing `elenco' (credits) with brilliant carnival music is almost more spectacular than João's triumphant Josephine-Bakeresque performances in the bar had been. One leaves the theater with a curious feeling of exhilaration. This is a movie that really builds and builds. The overriding notion it fosters is one of diamonds in the mud, beautiful tropical flowers that blossom in a swamp. Perversion and exoticism here seem not limp and flaccid but brave and vibrant.

There's an energy in this first film by Karim Ainouz that gives promise of an inextinguishable life force that's only begun to be set loose on the screen. Lázaro Ramos, as João Francisco dos Santos, embodies his part completely. Exactly why some writers have found this movie incoherent is hard to see. Perhaps they weren't properly tuned in. And it seems that some Brazilian viewers were put off. Well, the material is unconventional and bold. The sketches are impressionistic; the darkness leaves much to the imagination. But incoherent Madame Satã never is. Within the logic of talent and exclusion and bold desperation it all makes perfect sense, and the progression of a wild gay life is as clear as the many lives sketched so brilliantly in Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles' Cidade de Deus. 2002 was a splendid year for movies in Rio purely on the strength of these two.

I feel proud about the Brazilian cinema of the last years. Although facing many difficulties, mainly financial ones, the Brazilian film-makers are proving that it is possible to make a truly high level cinema here.

"Madame Satã" is just another example of this new Brazilian cinematography. Excellent photography, which really brings to the screen the mood of 30's bars and nightclubs from Lapa (Rio de Janeiro traditional bohemian neighbourhood, known also for its violence). The camera is "drunk" and "high" in many moments, in others is able to show tenderness in an ultra violent and uncontrolable character (the scenes where João Francisco takes care of Laurita's baby). The cast is excellent, with a great merit of young Lázaro Ramos, performing a character that has everything to lead to exageration or to a ridiculous acting; even though, Lázaro manages to bring to life in a realistic way someone who is a homosexual with feminine behaviour in some times and in other times is a scary fighter, who could deal with 3 or 4 opponents bare handed.

The main achievement of the film, though, in my opinion, is that the director wanted to show the personality of João Francisco, not worrying too much in telling a story. The plot is almost absent, we are invited to make part of João Francisco's turbulent, violent and difficult life through Lapa's gethos and bars, dealing with prostitutes, police, thugs and dangerous people. We can understand why Francisco,later called "Madame Satã" lived that way (even though we may not agree with it) , having in one hand the fascination for a fairy tale world of fantasy, with songs in French and taking care of a baby and in the other hand dealt with streetfights, robbery and eventual imprisonments in jail. If it is difficult for someone to be poor, black and homosexual in nowaday's Brazil, imagine in the 30's!

Great movie, great acting, great photography, great editing, the only thing I can do is give it a 10!

This is like watching a Jean Genet novel translated into Portuguese and relocated to Brazil, circa 1930. All the characters are present: thieves and whores, drag queens and murders, love and hate. Lázaro Ramos, as Madame Satã, gives a wonderful performance that gives real meaning to the word `fierce';a complicated man whose only possible response to a world that hates him is to rage against it. And what rage! And what love! The family he pieces together, as wounded and damaged as he is, provides the only constant in a life that poverty and exile have doomed to chaos. Karim Ainouz, the director, must be congratulated on this courageous film.

Built on subtly-nuanced performances by an outstanding cast, this film is a real cinematic gem. From the period costumes to the cinematography to the music, everything fits together. Lazaro Ramos as Joao Francisco dos Santos gives a tour de force performance especially powerful given the range of emotions necessary for the role. But all of the actors shine, under the demanding, gifted direction of Mr. Anouz. In some very long takes, for instance when Laurita tells dos Santos of the death of Rehatindho, all aspects of the craft are called into play. It cannot have been easy to maintain for such a long take.

The story is inspirational in the sense that the human spirit triumphs, love fulfills, talent overcomes in even the most sordid circumstances. Whether in Berlin or Brazil, life is, most certainly, a cabaret.