Madame Satã (2002)

Too much of everything

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

This is like watching a Jean Genet novel translated into Portuguese and relocated to Brazil, circa 1930. All the characters are present: thieves and whores, drag queens and murders, love and hate. Lázaro Ramos, as Madame Satã, gives a wonderful performance that gives real meaning to the word `fierce';a complicated man whose only possible response to a world that hates him is to rage against it. And what rage! And what love! The family he pieces together, as wounded and damaged as he is, provides the only constant in a life that poverty and exile have doomed to chaos. Karim Ainouz, the director, must be congratulated on this courageous film.

I felt a gap between the movie itself, and the closing credits in which later history about the Madam Sata character is narrated along with film clips of Rio Carnival. That gap is a jagged edge for me, and yet I cannot propose a smoother ending or smoother inclusion of the personality of Madam Sata into the main.Other than that comment, I was caught into the excellent casting, direction and editing. The documentary seemed to be somewhat detached in time although we knew the inclusive dates as it covered multiple issues of race, prejudice, anger, bigotry, self-identity -- and all things that are experienced or tested by humans in sexual drive and satisfaction. It is in the latter that we definitely feel the struggle, violence, growth and pride of Joao Francisco dos Santos as a strongly driven heterosexual man that ultimately yields to his comfort in cross-dressing while maintaining a jagged, devoted relationship with Laurita and her/his child.Wonderful mosaic

Confused and shallow biography of Madame Satã, a notorious Brazilian homossexual thief fails in the attempt of give a large, acurate and more profound vision of a so curious and rich man. The movie just go on and on telling about his homosexual relationship, his exibitions as a gay singer in some old and decadent places but forget to portrait the human side of the main character, mainly his relations with the press, the intelectual of his time. The direction is electric but at the end the result is just routine. Ramos gives a superb performance as Satã but he doesn't save this lame misfire. I give this a 4 (four).

If you don't feel uncomfortable to watch homosexual sex scenes, it's worth to watch it. Shows Rio de Janeiro when in a hypocrite society, who just ignored social problems like poverty, color distinction and others, that still existing. Tells a story in a simple way, without using any Hollywood's cliché - and shows how and why the violence grows on shantytowns or guetos in the main brazilian cities.