Capitu e o capítulo

One cannot describe Júlio Bressane's cinema without underlining the vitality that pulsates in each of his new films. With a background as tortuous as the sentimental entanglements narrated by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis in Dom Casmurro, the Brazilian director's latest film manages to radiate the colours of Pedro Peres' paintings or dance to the rhythm of samba with Exaltação à Mangueira, but also to sustain at the same time a tense tale about the torments and twists and turns of love. Bressane's late style is expressed here through the subtlety and refinement of portraiture as a cinematographic technique. The camera captures a series of domestic episodes with minimal movements, at times even with a static quality, and the concatenation of the snippets of some of the actions carried out by the protagonist quartet end up forming a bewitching and hermetic universe, where access to the bustling emotional life of the characters takes place through the contemplation of their faces, but also through listening to their heated dialogues and philosophical soliloquies.
The scent of the roses decorating the rooms or glimpsed in the paintings seems to flood the rooms with a fragrance that contrasts with the drama staged in them. And this is Capitu e o capítulo: a delicate balance between the reason-heart conflict, a bonfire that burns with the fire of the liberation of drives, and is alternately suffocated by the cold calm of theoretical reflection. RAMON DEL BUEY