CENTRAL STATION (Central do Brasil)
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Sony Pictures Classics Director: Walter Salles Writer: Joao Emanuel Carneiro, Marcos Bernstein Cast: Fernanda Montenegro, Marilia Pera, Vinicius de Oliveira, Soia Lira, Othon Bastos, Otavio Augusto, Stela Freitas, Matheus Nachtergaele
When Dan Quayle was campaigning for the presidency, he was advised to make a good-will trip to Latin America, presumbly to capture the votes of people from those lands now living in the U.S. He reportedly demurred: "How can I give speeches there? I don't even speak Latin!" Too bad. When the former vice president does learn enough of the language, perhaps there's a place for him as mayor of Rio de Janeiro. Family values are sorely needed there, even more than they are in his home country. If a kid has no parents or relatives willing to take him in, he's not likely to be picked up by a welfare organization. It's life on the streets with a career as a petty thief. Things could be worse, though. Given the lack of respect accorded to young street people, he could be shot by police for no particular reason or beaten up just for the heck of it. "Central Station," a Brazilian film which has made the rounds of the festivals including Sundance and Berlin, is a remarkable study of an unfortunate kid and how he is saved by a most unlikely benefactor. Directed by Walter Salles, heretofore known more as a documentary film maker than a story teller, "Central Station" is a poignant road movie about the unlikely friendship between a cynical sixty-seven year old woman and a nine year old boy she meets outside Rio's principal train station.
The two leads are as implausible a combination as the people they play. The part of the aging woman, Dora, is performed by Brazil's most celebrated actress, Fernanda Montenegro, while her counterpart, the 10-year-old Josue, is rendered by a Vinicius de Oliveira who not only had no acting experience but had not even been inside a movie theater. (Oliveria won the part against a field of 1500 lads and what's more he prevailed by accident: the director ran into him, a shoe shine boy at a small airport in the center of Rio, and was asked to help him to buy a sandwich, promising to return the money when Salles came back from Sao Paolo.)
The story opens on Dora, a retired elementary school teacher, who works as a scribe outside Rio's Central Station. Catering to a largely poor and illiterate clientele, she writes letters which they dictate to her, charging one dollar each for her services, but she has such contempt for her customers that she later trashes ninety percent of the mail. When a woman, accompanied by her son Josue, is hit by a bus and killed, Dora takes the boy temporarily to her home, then sells him unwittingly for one thousand dollars to a man who intends to have the kid killed, his organs sold to rich clients in the west. When Dora hears of the scheme from her neighbor Irene (Marilia Pera), she abducts Josue from the criminal's home and takes him by bus on a long journey to locate his father, a drunk who had run away from the family some time earlier.
Manipulating the trenchant screenplay by Joao Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein and jogging the emotions with a robust piano sound track, Salles takes us from Rio to a poor, dusty, but developing town located in one of the countless rural backwater areas of the huge country. On the way she and the boy develop a profound affection for each other, with Dora regaining the human feelings she had lost years back after retiring from her profession. Virtually all the people we meet on the road are dirt poor, many deeply religious. In one scene designed to demonstrate Dora's renewed feeling of romance, she and Josue meet a deeply religious truck driver who gives them a lift and feeds the penniless pair until he is scared off by Dora's affectionate overtures. Cameraman Walter Carvalho is particularly adept at capturing a variety of sharply etched faces among Brazil's poor: a truckload of Evangelical women who gather and sing to a patron saint; and a succession of illiterates who compose letters for Dora. While the story is not likely to be acclaimed for broad humor, Dora keeps her neighbor engrossed in tales of her customers. One of them writes that he had been following the personals columns and that the recipient is the only woman he is interested in. (He wrote the same letter to ten women.) One woman wants to return to her abusive husband, but Dora refuses to send the letter because she does not wish to have a part in the beating this customer was in for.
Fernanda Montenegro is a seasoned actress who turns in an expected ardent performance. But Vinicius de Oliveira is a true find, an unpretentious, wholly natural young man who does his part like a child star nurtured on years of training. The film does shows Brazilians as both good and bad people, in one case portraying the senseless shooting of a youthful thief by adults who'd as soon kill these young toughs as look at them. The movie does best in exploring the growing friendship between its two disparate principals but is not as successful in expanding the theme to demonstrate that Brazil is a country in transition. It is a personal story, albeit often airless, and one likely to be seen as Brazil's entry to the 1998 Academy Awards competition.
Not Rated. Running time: 115 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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