Lovers Leap

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I decided on a whim to go see The Silver Cliff at MoMA last night - it was playing as part of their on-going "Contenders" series, which has them screening films that might get awards attention this year. It's where I saw The Descendants the other week, for instance. I knew nothing about this movie, but I had some time to kill and a MoMA membership that gets me in these movies cheap. So to convince myself either way I looked up a review, and...

"The film opens with shots of thundering surf on the beach at Rio de Janeiro. Djalma (Otto Jr.) takes a pre-dawn swim before walking home near-naked through the still-sleepy city, then engaging in intense morning sex with his wife Violeta (Alessandra Negrini)."

That along with the fact that the movie is only eighty minutes long was enough to sell me. These are how decisions are made, people. Let it be said that it's real shame I can't find any pictures of Otto Jr.'s surf-walk and so forth that opens the film, because he is an immense wall of beautiful bearish man, and the entire first ten minutes of the film is completely focused on his nakedness. This is a good way to start your movies, film-makers! Let it be a lesson to all of you.

But they should also know that they need to release pictures of this with their press materials. That picture up top is the best I could find of him, and that is not saying much. That is not saying anything. Just goes to show ya the cultural differences - you can't turn on the internet this week without reading about Michael Fassbender's penis (as if I can displace any blame for that!) but this Brazilian film isn't trying in the slightest to capitalize on its heady gratuitousness. Come on, world! Get your act together! But since I'm me and I can sniff out beefcake at a thousand miles I did manage to find this brief clip, which offers a hint of what lay within:

I am amazing. He is amazing. There's much more to the sequence than this bit, but I guess we'll have to wait to see it. Sigh.

But it would be monstrously misleading to pretend these first ten furry minutes are what The Silver Cliff is about. It veers off from there into entirely different territory and becomes an elegiac dream, at times sad and spacey, at times frantic and scary, wandering through the sandy streets of night-time Rio. I was reminded of two recent very good films while watching this - Boy A and The Headless Woman (review) - and if you know my love for those movies then you know that's a compliment.