CENTRAL STATION (CENTRAL DO BRASIL) (Sony Classics) Starring: Fernanda Montenegro, Vinicius de Oliveira. Screenplay: Joao Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein. Producer: Arthur Cohn. Director: Walter Salles. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 114 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Some day soon, I'm going to put together a list of the most over-used premises in film history, the ones which describe the entire story arc in a single sentence. It will include such classics as "Mismatched Buddy Cops Gradually Become Friends While Blowing a City to Shrapnel" (recently seen in RUSH HOUR), "Workaholic Learns Through Tragedy and/or Wacky Misadventures to Appreciate His/Her Family" (recently seen in ONE TRUE THING). To be fair, and to recognize that certain plots become canonical for valid thematic reasons, I'll even try to note examples of each that managed to add a spark of originality.
CENTRAL STATION takes one marvelously constructed character and uses her to put just enough of a twist on one of those well-known single-sentence stories: "Jaded Older Character Learns Important Lessons When Forced to Care for a Child." The jaded older character is Dora Teixera (Fernanda Montenegro), a retired schoolteacher who supplements her meager income by writing letters for the many illiterate individuals who pass through Rio de Janeiro's train depot. One of Dora's customers is a woman who writes to the absentee father of her 9-year-old son Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira). When the woman is hit by a bus, leaving Josue a homeless orphan, Dora's first instinct is to sell him to an adoption broker. Instead, she decides to deliver both the letter and the boy in person, setting off with Josue on a difficult journey to Brazil's rural northeast.
Such stories usually begin with characters that are crusty but identifiably loveable, making the journey little more than a waiting game until the resident adorable tyke trims off the crust. Dora, on the other hand, is a fairly grim piece of work. Our initial image of her as a kindly educated woman helping out the pobrecitos gives way to an image of bitterness and cynicism, as we see her arbitrarily shred or hide away letters she decides are not worth sending. Fernanda Montenegro uses her wonderfully weathered face to create Dora as a grandmotherly con artist, and not the kind of devilishly adorable con artist justified in most films by the fact that he or she steals Robin Hood-like from the rich. Dora steals from the poor because she feels contempt for them and for the foolish optimism they express in their letters and their prayers.
What we gradually learn is that Dora's contempt is really a manifestation of her own insecurities, her inability to maintain relationships, and her issues with the father who abandoned her as a child. It's eventually obvious that CENTRAL STATION is about Dora's quest for her own father more than it is about her quest for Josue's father, but that's exactly what gives the familiar story more thematic weight. The cute bonding moments between Dora and Josue are few and far between, allowing director Walter Salles to concentrate on the fact that the journey changes Dora more than the child does. Montenegro's performance brings an edge even to moments like her clumsy attempts to show affection to a truck driver (Othon Bastos). For most of the film, her anti-social personality feels completely genuine, not in the least like a device for an uplifting conclusion.
Inevitably, though, CENTRAL STATION has got to reach its uplifting conclusion. Dora will see a light of optimism, both for herself and for Josue, and move on to live a more fulfilled life. And it is only when that happens that CENTRAL STATION feels false, even though the change is necessary in order for it to be dramatically satisfying. Montenegro is a deft enough actress to limit the burden of schmaltz, but she can't change the fact that the script tells her that, by God, she's going to learn Important Lessons. CENTRAL STATION is still a good film, satisfying for three-quarters of its length as a character study. There's just no way it can escape completely the conventions of its single-sentence story.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 station identifications: 7.
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