BEFORE: Emily Mortimer carries over from "The Bookshop" and she'll be here tomorrow as well - it almost seems counter-productive to slip this film, with such a large cast, here in between two films with the same actress. Usually, I'd save this one to maybe get me out of a linking jam, like who would expect to find Emily Mortimer, Harvey Keitel and Rodrigo Santoro in the same movie? This could have been of better use to me perhaps, but it is what it is.
This year may go down as the banner year for me where foreign films are concerned - already it's the most global chain I've attempted, except maybe for 2012 when I finished Movie Year 4 with a TCM-programmed trip around the world, based on where each film's story was set (not necessarily filmed) and I started in San Francisco with "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" and ended in San Francisco with "The Lady From Shanghai". (Then I did a victory lap by watching with the 1956 version of "Around the World in Eighty Days", so really, it was twice around.). This year I'm watching more films MADE in different countries, starting with "Parasite" and "Okja", then spending over a week in Sweden with my Bergman marathon and the three original "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" films. Since then I've been all over with "The Seagull" (set in Russia), "Third Person" (partially set in Italy and Paris) and "Life Itself" (partially set in Spain). Now, after three days in the U.K., I'm off to Brazil. (Not literally, I haven't been outside of the state of New York since last May - but that could change very soon.)
FOLLOW-UP TO: "New York, I Love You" (Movie #782), "Paris, Je t'Aime" (Movie #3,446)
THE PLOT: Third installment of the "Cities of Love" series - this collective feature is made up of 10 stories of romance set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
AFTER: It's hard to believe that it's only been a year since I watched "Paris, Je t'Aime", but it's been TEN years since I watched "New York, I Love You". And I kind of watched those two in the wrong order, the Paris-based film was released in 2006 and the NYC-based follow-up came out in 2008. But then it was another six years before this Rio-based film hit theaters in 2014, and I'm really always playing catch up, no matter what I do. But I'm only seven years late this time, instead of fourteen, and if I can work in "Berlin, I Love You" next year I'll only be three years behind. Yes, even given two films in the same series with enormous casts, there's no acting link between today's film and the next one in the series (even though Natalie Portman was the link between "New York, I Love You" and "Paris, Je t'Aime" and then Emily Mortimer was also in two films, the Paris one and the Rio one. So it's ALMOST like the producers meant for all the films to link together by actor, except for when they don't.)
I've only got "Berlin, I Love You" (or is it "Berlin, Ich Liebe Dich"?) left on my list after this, but there are more films in this "Cities of Love" franchise than I was aware of - I kid you not, in 2014 the same producer also released "Tbilisi, I Love You", and I can't even tell you what country Tbilisi is in. (It's Georgia - did Moscow not have enough audience appeal?). And the next installment, "Shanghai, I Love You" is in the works - they want the franchise to also cover Jerusalem, Venice, Delhi, Marseille and New Orleans before coming to your town. Why not Rome, wouldn't that be a no-brainer? Las Vegas, with all its quickie drive-through wedding chapels? Bangkok? (nah, don't go there...). I'd think of Sydney, Australia as a viable topic before I'd associate Jerusalem or Delhi with love, but maybe that's just me.
I think any franchise stands a chance of delivering diminishing returns as it progresses, and this one seems to be no exception. Some of these segments don't seem to deal with the topic of love or romance at all, and the main complaint that people seem to have about it is that it seems to present stories that were approved by the Brazilian Board of Tourism. Sure, come to Rio, fall in love, they have people of every kind of skin color there - which seems to sound a little like the country is pimping out its people's diversity. (Almost as if "Bangkok, I Love You" were to showcase Thailand for its many in-between genders...) I think the main problem here is that "Rio, I Love You" chose to switch back and forth between its many stories, only advancing each one a little bit before jumping to another, in the style of "Third Person". The previous two installments, to my recollection, all told each story completely, start to finish, before moving on to the next one. Needless to say, toggling between stories makes the whole thing confusing - I had trouble figuring out where each story began, and then I was never sure when each story was done, or if the film was going to circle around again and add to each one, just a bit more.
The stand-out tale here, for me, was called "Texas", in which Texas, a boxing champion, was in a terrible car accident, caused by his drunk driving, and he lost his arm in the crash, while his wife Isabel was paralyzed. But he can still fight with one arm, so he participates in underground "fight club" style matches to win money so that she can have an operation, and perhaps walk again. This story's got so much drama to it, it really deserved to be a full feature film by itself! More drama comes along when a rich British widower has noticed that Texas' wife closely resembles his own, who died before giving birth to his child. He challenges the boxer to a fight, and he makes a rather daring wager on the outcome, which feels a bit like "Indecent Proposal" meets "Creed" or something. I really would have loved to see this story fleshed out a bit more, or even learn who won the fight - but I guess Texas sort of lost either way? What a shame that the film followed up with all the other stories and brought some of them to a satisfactory ending, but not this one. I guess somehow there wasn't enough time? Or did it not matter, because Texas loved Isabel so much he was willing to sacrifice his relationship with her so that she could walk again. Perhaps it's a bit melodramatic in the end, and over the top, but I think this was the strongest of all 10 stories in this anthology.
One of the other stories almost made the grade - "Acho que Estou Apaixonado" is about a Hollywood movie star who comes to town and annoys his limo driver, who then intentionally brings him to where a bunch of his teenage girl fans are hanging out. Then when the movie star spies the famous Sugarloaf Mountain, he decides that he MUST climb it, freestyle, even though his press junket starts in just half an hour. The limo driver has to go with him, because he's responsible for the star while he's in Rio, and the star nearly dies while climbing the mountain, but the limo driver saves him. When they reach the top, they both see a vision of a beautiful singer, who kisses them and floats off. OK, this ending made no sense, unless both men actually died while climbing Sugarloaf, and their souls imagined the singer. But then when the story circles back to this pair, there's a very different fate for these two men.
The rest either fell flat, or were very confusing to me - I had the subtitles on, but perhaps there was still some kind of language or cultural barrier at work. "O Vampiro do Rio" was just about a waiter at a restaurant, who spends his nights off turning Rio's street denizens into fellow vampires, and they all come out to greet him and they dance. No real story payoff there. "O Milagre" was about Harvey Keitel, perhaps playing a fictionalized version of himself, as an actor playing a sinful priest in some kind of telenovela, who later goes for a walk (weak story point) and then he and his co-star pretend to be Jesus and Mary on the phone to fulfill the fantasy of a young street kid. I thought these stories were supposed to be about love, only this one wasn't. Another story, "Dona Furlana" didn't seem to fit the theme either, it was just about a man who discovers his grandmother living on the streets of Rio, and his parents had told him she was dead. He tries to "save" her from living on the streets, but she then shows him that it's not such a bad life.
"A Musa" was about a sand sculptor who imagines different music for everyone who walks by, or something. This could have been interesting, but he feels an attraction for a woman who walks by, has trouble finding her again (hearing her "music" among all the other types) and then when he sees her again, she's with a boyfriend - so he tears down the sand sculpture he made, and then makes a new one, of her feet? This just didn't seem to progress logically at all. "Pas de Deux" was about two ballet dancers who are also lovers, and one has received an offer to join a more prestigious dance company, and the other hasn't, so they have to decide what to do about their relationship. Ho hum, who cares? And "Quando nao ha Mais Amor" was about an American man and French woman living together and arguing, but honestly I couldn't even tell what they were fighting about - and again, I had the subtitles on, I was reading along!
I'm betting the most controversial segment, though was "La Fortuna", which told the tale of a young-ish woman married to an older man, and he's seen in a wheelchair, though at the start of the film we see him sleeping on the plane, so deeply that his wife thinks he has died. That's not even funny, so we're not off to a great start here. The wife gets to eat chocolate, smoke and swim in the pool, while he doesn't get to do any of those things - so he suggests they go to the beach (even though he doesn't like the beach, or sitting in the sun) but he knows that this beach has infamous riptides, and eventually she'll want to go for a swim, so he gets to smoke and eat her chocolates while she gets pulled out to sea? That's a pretty funky definition of "love", if you ask me. It feels very wrong, more like something that belongs in a horror film than a love-based anthology. As REO Speedwagon once sang, "That ain't love - I believe you've got the wrong emotion..."
And the last segment, "Inutil Paisagem", was just about a man on a hang-glider who flew around the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer, and he yelled at the statue, because he was very angry at God. Umm, I think. This was another non-starter of a story that also went nowhere.
I'm not sure how this franchise has managed to survive, this installment cost 20,000,000 Brazilian umm, dollars (?) to make, and only grossed $31,000 US and $601,000 worldwide. That's a huge loss, so who the heck invested in the next film in the series? They found a fresh set of suckers, I guess.
Also starring Basil Hoffman (last seen in "The Box"), Rodrigo Santoro (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Bruna Linzmeyer, Harvey Keitel (last seen in "The Irishman"), Nadine Labaki, Cláudia Abreu, Fernanda Montenegro, Eduardo Sterblitch, Hugo Carvana, Michel Melamed, Vincent Cassel (last seen in "The Reckoning"), Marcio Garcia, Marcelo Serrado, Ryan Kwanten (last seen in "Supercon"), Bebel Gilberto (last heard in "Rio 2"), John Turturro (last seen in "Grace of My Heart"), Vanessa Paradis (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Land Vieira, Laura Neiva, Jason Isaacs (last seen in "The Chumscrubber"), Wagner Moura (last seen in "Elysium"), Tonico Pereira, Roberta Rodrigues, Diogo de Lima, Cassi Abranches, Cleo Pires, Caio Junqueira, Cauã Antunes, Débora Nascimento, Paulo Campani, Stepan Nercessian, Xando Graça, Regina Casé, Sandro Rocha, Lais Correa, Jéssica Barbosa, William Vorhees, Marcio Rosario (last seen in "The Expendables"), Henrique Pires.
RATING: 4 out of 10 palm trees
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