Lavoura Arcaica

Lavoura Arcaica is baroque Brazilian cinema with a visual language that, entirely in style, is just as overheated and complex as the themes of this family drama. The script is an adaptation of a novel by Raduan Nassar about a family of Lebanese immigrants in the interior of Brazil. While they were staying at the locations mentioned in the novel, the filmmakers worked out in detail their version of the novel with the actors. As a result partly thanks to the scale of the film (the length of the film in its entirety and the time taken for some scenes) the viewer is continuously aware of the relationship between the written source and the film.Carvalho tackles grand themes such as love, incest, prostitution, homosexuality and family ties. The power of suppressed passions and horrific family conflicts is expressed in the whirlwind camera, a rich palette of colours and a great intensity in the acting.Lavoura Arcaica is the dark side of the parable of the Prodigal Son, placed in an extremely Brazilian setting that is however dominated by a universal, classic Mediterranean tradition. The film was presented as a project at the 1999 CineMart.