Word: babenco
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Spider Woman was filmed in Brazil (in English), directed by the Argentine-born Hector Babenco from a script by the American Leonard Schrader and a novel by the Argentine Manuel Puig. This time the artistic melting pot bubbled to perfection. The film's gaudily stylized performances (notably Hurt's, which has grandeur about it), all its tonalities, both visual and verbal, are pitched one notch above the naturalistic. Thus Babenco may subtly explore issues, both political and psychological, that are usually dulled by moviemakers' earnestness and self-importance. Full of sudden startlements and twists, the film is delighted...
Plucking children from obscurity and making them stars, even for one movie, can be perilous, as the kid actors from almost any '80s TV show can attest. And even Fernando Ramos da Silva, the illiterate Brazilian boy who starred at 12 in Hector Babenco's Pixote, returned to the streets and, when he was 19, was killed by police. There are milder dangers: Boyle is worried that Etel, having carried his first film, might be disappointed if he doesn't get another big role. "The business can be very loving and also very hurtful, almost simultaneously," Boyle says...
...Trier's Dogville, which had all the early buzz but left without any prizes, a beautiful stranger (Nicole Kidman) takes a load of abuse in a Colorado town, then, like an Old Testament God in an I'm-sick-of-Sodom mood, has everyone gunned down. Brazilian director Hector Babenco ended his Carandiru with the slaughter of innocents in a S?o Paulo jail, and Austrian Michael Haneke depicted the moral chaos attending an unexplained disaster in his testy The Time of the Wolf...
...weather and gorgeous people were never so seductive. As beautiful as it was outside the Palais, that's how depressing it was inside. Good movies, bad ones - and a huge batch of pictures that could be called ambitious mediocrities - all had the tone of apocalyptic despair. Brazilian director Hector Babenco ended his Carandiru with the slaughter of innocents in a São Paulo jail. Austrian Michael Haneke depicted the moral chaos attending an unspecified disaster in his testy The Time of the Wolf. Even Denys Arcand's genial The Barbarian Invasions, a French-Canadian billet-doux to a dear...
...first glance, "Strawberry and Chocolate" seems like a Cuban version of the Manuel Puig/Hector Babenco "Kiss of the Spider Woman." There is the flamboyant gay man, the uptight, straight Marxist and lots of political oppression. Straw-berry and Chocolate" also contains the maudlin elements of what in hack reviewer parlance is called a "feel-good movie." However, it is the critique of Cuban society as it stands and the glimpse into a decaying Havana which make Gutierrez Alea's film so pointed and topical. "Strawberry and Chocolate" makes a plea for tolerance, a virtue not much in evidence in Castro...