Word: bahia
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...about 1986, the year humanity took its first step down the evolutionary ladder. The tale is a burlesque that mixes natural history, sitcom humor and the Old Testament. For the Flood there is conflict, economic disaster and pollution; the part of Noah's Ark is played by the Bahia de Darwin, a cruise ship that shuttles tourists from Ecuador to the Galapagos. There are baggy-pants characters including a Midwestern con man, a widowed schoolteacher, a Japanese computer wizard and a German sea captain. All converge for the Nature Cruise of the Century, an event that promises the company...
...send a movie audience marching out to the barricades, you must get them into the theater. Don't cerebrate - celebrate. Bye Bye Brazil does just that, setting a naturalistic tale to a bossa nova beat. It follows a tatty caravan of entertainers through the backwaters of Bahia, making music and mischief and the occasional friend or lover. The glittery magic means more to the actors than it ever will to the villagers; the show must go on so that the showmen can continue to believe in themselves. The attractive cast does not press this point; they too are here...
...foreign coexists with the Brazilian. My friends had both Guarana, a Brazilian soda made from an Amazonian fruit, and Coca-Cola in their refrigerators. We would go to a club to hear a singer from the state of Bahia--the "bulge" in the northeast of the country--chant rhythmic, Brazilian music and then drive along the beach, listening to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer on the radio. But there are the adaptations. I learned that the Portuguese word for razor blade, gilete, is also slang for "bisexual" (two sides of a razor blade...
Everyone knows McGee's address, if not his destination. He is usually to be found at Slip F18, Bahia Mar, Fort Lauderdale, aboard The Busted Flush, the old tub he won in a poker game with "four pink ones up and a stranger down." Trav is calls himself a "salvage consultant," but his real business is not in maritime wreck age but rescuing lost souls and money. In recent years, starting with The Dreadful Lemon Sky (No. 16, 1975), McGee has had troubles of his own. He has become increasingly morose, and the cases he handled were no real...
...doesn't really work. Camus's viewpoint is a little too hard to see; as a result, it is largely unconvincing. It is hard to imagine an American audience giving itself up to pure enjoyment of the scenery and the gaiety. Bahia is an idyllic world, where even whores can demand the right to love; it is not a world that reflects our own experience, and it is difficult to take it all seriously. Bahia is gay, joyous, beautiful, but it is not believable. And in the end, it isn't really satisfying, either...