Capitu and the Chapter

“If you had to choose between me and your mother, who would it be?” Capitu asks provocatively of her problematic lover. Elsewhere, they dance to inaudible music, with their friends, each couple keeping to a rhythm of their own. At times, this depiction of the memories we see one Dom Casmurro commit to paper with a flamboyant pen seems to be an interplay of conflicting emotions – particularly when jealousy raises its head.

Júlio Bressane, a major exponent of Brazilian avant-garde cinema and IFFR Film Maker in Focus in 2000, derived his material from the famous novel Dom Casmurro (1899) by Machado de Assis, who, like Casmurro, was tormented by epilepsy. Bressane composed this film in the form of a frank exploration of visual and theatrical possibilities; during a musical interlude, the violinist appears in the shot. Capitu and the Chapter is interspersed with fragments of Bressane’s previous works and leaves itself open to many interpretations.