VERA
Brazil, 1987
92 minutes
Film notes by the Dartmouth Film Society
(Copyright 1988, Dartmouth Film Society.)
Director: Sergio Toledo
Cinematography: Rodolfo Sanchez
Tercio G. da Mota
Music: Arrigo Barnabe
Vera:.......................................ANN BEATRIZ NOGUEIRA Prof. Paolo Trauberg:................................RAUL CORTEZ Clara:...............................................AIDA LEINER Orphanage Director:...............................CARLOS KROEBER Paizao:.............................................CIDA ALMEIDA Telma:..........................................ADRIANA ABUJAMRA Helena Trauberg:......................................IMARA REIS Izelda:...............................................NORMA BLUM Librarians:..........................................ABRAM FAARC ..........................................LIANA DUVAL
Director Sergio Toledo's first effort, VERA, is a landmark film for Brazilian cinema, in large measure because of the acting talents of newcomer Ann Beatriz Nogueira and because of the subject matter of the film itself. Brazilian cinema is in large measure state supported and state run -- roughly 40% of the tax levied on the producer's profits are fed back into the film industry by the government; and before a film may be made in Brazil, the producers must have the official permission of the state run Departamento de Divertimentos Publicos (Divisao de Censura). Further, the state requires that all theatres show newsreels and short subject films of local and regional interest before every feature film. Over the years, such state involvement has not fostered a bristling, busy cinema industry, and it is a measure of the relative lack of home grown Brazilian celluloid that the government now requires that all theatres show one full length original Brazilian film for every eight foreign films. It was against this backdrop several years ago that director Sergio Toledo cast Ann Beatriz Nogueira in a film that unlike so much of Brazilian cinema did not depict the history of Brazil or dramatize the local folklore. VERA is groundbreaking not so much for its homosexual content, but rather for its quality of being a story that could have taken place anywhere, in any society.
VERA is the story of an unhappy young woman struggling with her identity and sexuality. Reared in a Sao Paolo orphanage, Vera is subject at an early age to a spartan, if not positively bleak existence. In the orphanage she develops her own strong belief in a kind of social Darwinism -- and in the process of selecting herself as one of those destined to survive comes to the conclusion that to be feminine is to be vulnerable and weak. Thus, like many of the other young girls in the orphanage, she strives to be more masculine, more aggressive; and in this endeavour, she is vastly more successful than her peers. By the time she leaves the orphanage, she is convinced that she is really a man trapped in a woman's body and she resolves herself to live out her life in a masculine fashion.
Following her leaving the orphanage she finds work as a librarian and begins to make masculine sexual advances towards one of her coworkers, Clara. It is in the context of Vera's relationship with Clara that VERA, the film, begins to shine. Vera, the character, now calling herself by her surname, Bauer, cannot understand why Clara is upset by her sexual advances -- she, Bauer, is after all an attractive young man. Clara meanwhile wrestles with her own lesbian sexual awakening. The plot twists and the sexual identities of the characters become skewed, and all the while director Toledo makes his most salient social commentary. As Vera the character begins to bully Clara in the machismo fashion of a hot-blooded Latino man, Toledo poses the question of whether aggression and desire for dominance are strictly masculine traits, or whether both sexes share equally in their desire to subordinate their sexual partners. Further Toledo asks what the real difference is between heterosexual and homosexual love. From Bauer's point of view, Clara is a woman to be alternately wooed and forcefully driven into a heterosexual relationship. From Clara's point of view, Vera is both the alluring lesbian seductress and the domineering bull dyke.
Much of the weight of making the film a success falls on the shoulders of lead actress Ann Beatriz Nogueira, and she bears this burden admirably, as her best actress award at the 1987 Berlin film festival will attest. Carrying herself as a man and managing to assume a masculine role in a serious and occasionally black dramatic work light years removed from the likes of Victor/Victoria and Tootsie, Nogueira earned the praise of one Latin American critic who suggested that she was "destined to be Brazil's first great actress." Vincent Canby of the New York Times seems to concur, saying "Miss Nogueira is exceptionally good in the title role."
Sergio Toledo as director meets with less lavish praise, although few critics would suggest that as a directorial debut VERA is anything less than outstanding. Vincent Canby continues his observations on the film by commenting "Mr. Toledo is a writer and director of real potential, though he can't yet bring himself to go directly to the heart of a scene if it means sacrificing picturesque images or ruthlessly cutting out redundancies, such as the television images of destructive phallic symbols that punctuate the movie from start to finish." Indeed, there are sequences in the film where pictorial continuity takes a backseat to the exciting camera angle, and more than once the viewer's attention is drawn from the story in the time it takes to think "gee, what a neat camera angle," or "wow, what a clever image." Most critics would agree that Toledo still has to learn the value of subtlety.
Perhaps the greatest shortcoming of the film is the ending, which one critic described as "lame... not only biologically improbable... it undercuts the pointed social comment that the film makes;" however, the ending aside, VERA is still a milestone for Brazilian cinema. Following in the footsteps of countrywoman Fernanda Torres, who won a prize at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for her work in the soapsudsy "Love me Forever or Never," Nogueira makes a strong stamp on the international cinema scene. Further, under Toledo's direction she examines topics that are universal and could take place in any society -- not the Brazil of the historical past that brought such films as director Carlos Diegues' Quilombo (starring Daniel Filho Joao Nogueira) to the world's attention in 1984. For a film made in a heavily state influenced industry, for a directorial debut, and for one of the first films from Brazil to win international acclaim, VERA is truly a groundbreaking work.
- Eric Overton
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