Madame Satã (2002)

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Best movie of this year hands down!

Strong and Moving!

Just perfect...

As the film starts we see a close-up of the main character ready to go to jail with someone reading a list of his crimes and summing up what type of individual he is. It's a promising set-up but unfortunately we learn very little after that until the end credits start to roll and we read of a few more things about him. Story starts out in 1932 where we see Joao Francisco dos Santos (Lazaro Ramos) who lives in the slums of Brazil and is often in trouble with the law. Joao is a gay man who shares his residence with a prostitute named Laurita (Marcelia Cartaxo) and her child and a very effeminate gay male named Tabu (Flavio Bauraqui) and together they spend time hustling their customers and hanging out in sleazy bars and cabarets.*****SPOILER ALERT***** Joao is very volatile and consistently mistreats everyone around him to the point that he loses his job as an assistant to a European cabaret singer. But Joao can also fight very well and when a drunken jerk pulls a gun on him he manages to beat him severely and keep the gun. After a stint in jail he talks the owner of a local club to give him the opportunity to do a drag show which he does very successfully but one night a drunken onlooker assaults him to the point where Joao retrieves the gun that he has kept and kills the man in cold blood.This is the directorial debut of Karim Ainouz who does a commendable job of creating an effectively sleazy atmosphere and giving his film a true distinct look but the main problems lie with the script and the lack of information that is given about the characters. This is based on a true story and a real person but we learn very little about the character Joao except that he was a very angry man who was very hostile and violent to everyone he came in contact with. At the end of the film we learn that Joao was to become a very successful drag queen and a mini celebrity but also someone that would spend about 30 of his years in and out of jail and being guilty of about 10 murders! We never see any of that but if we did it may have helped lend some insight on the characters and for me to comment on this film more favorably.

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.

I found this movie mesmerizing, both due to the lead performance and the depiction of a time and place previously unfamiliar to me. A previous user comment said that Jaoa is heterosexual and that Lorita's baby is his. Just for clarification, he is not, and neither is the baby. I don't know how accurate this bio-pic really is in portraying the life of Jaoa Francisco vos Santos. But the character is a perplexing and complex mixture of violence and tenderness, talent and self-destruction. Clearly a victim of internalized homophobia and brutal class hierarchy, Jaoa knows he is destined for greatness, but can't keep his underlying rage from exploding all over everyone, friend and foe. It's dog eat dog in the slums of Rio, but Jaoa creates a family with a female prostitute named Lorita, her baby(on whom Jaoa dotes sweetly), and the greatly put-upon and abused servant, Tabu. Jaoa takes one step forward, then two steps back--straight in to prison, over and over. The real Jaoa Francisco vos Santos was a highly celebrated female impersonator and lived to the ripe old age of 76, despite an extremely punishing existence. I think the film reveals naked humanity, sometimes the viewer is horrified but can't stop peering into the wreckage.

Madame Sata is one of the most colorful, agitating, controversial, shifting, restless, erratic films you could ever watch on silver screen. The protagonist is also the antagonist with his often irrational and aggressive behaviour, possibly a trademark of Joao Francisco himself on which the film is based on, although this could be one of the film's flaws. The characters are as lively and colorful as he is and the acting is quite well, too.An activist and a pioneer in many ways in the Brasil of 1930's, he could be seen as a gay activist, a transvestite activist, a swinger activist, a one-man-show pioneer, a strong, willful, self-confident and proud individual who defies almost all possible rules, regulations and conventions of his time, and not because he wants to be standing out.Although the story line and Francisco's character are quite fanciful and interesting, the dialogues seem to be pretentious, the character build-up insufficient and the editing quite confusing, causing the overall feel to be incomplete and puzzling.