Starring: Caetano Gotardo, Malu Galli, Vinicius Meloni, Carlos Escher
Director: Caetano Gatardo
Country: Brazil
What is the point of this movie? Taking up two whole hours of life, the phrase “a waste of time” was invented for films just like this.
João (Gotardo) is going through some sort of existential crisis. Exactly what we are unsure, but seeing him snarling and heavy breathing on the phone in the opening shot, somewhere between aggression and an angry orgasm gives us a clue that something’s not right. But then we meet a mild-mannered man, following him through a series of encounters with his best friend (Galli), boyfriend (Meloni), a hook-up on the metro (Escher) and several more. In many cases, we just observe what he’s observing, which often isn’t much.
This is a painfully slow film that ruminates on inconsequential nothingness, inflated with its self-importance that the inane musings of these whet characters has some sort of meaning to someone more than the director. Funnily enough, the director is also our lead, which might explain the constant naval-gazing and his baffling decision to make us follow this bland and boring figure.
But then, just when you think you couldn’t care any less for this film, it suddenly veers in a meta direction, seeing Gatardo the director directing his film in the editing suite watching Gatardo the actor on screen. At that point it will dawn on you, as it did on me, that there is genuinely no point to this movie and the director has just proved it. It is, without doubt, one of the worst films I have ever seen.
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