Delicate Crime

Beto Brant's latest feature does not focus on the Brazilian underworld or roving revolver heroes, but on the pitfalls of love in the world of the arts. Quite some change, but with an intriguing and subversive result, unique in contemporary Brazilian cinema. Critic versus artist, bedroom versus courtroom, colour versus black & white, man versus woman, cerebral truths from theatre versus the tangible texture of paintings. Beautifully filmed by the one and only Walter Carvalho, this film with its deliberately unpolished structure describes a kind of love triangle. Theatre critic Antônio Martins (played by co-writer Marco Ricca) is renowned for his thorough, rational analyses. No one else in his métier is able to compare with his analyses of life and art. He is therefore surprised when he feels attracted to Inês (a beautiful debut by Lilian Taublib), a liberated nude model who does not live up to Antônio's ideals of beauty. On the contrary - she has an artificial leg. Antônio's desires are also frustrated because he is jealous of Inês' open relationship with painter José Torres Campana (played by the Mexican painter Felipe Ehrenberg). When Inês charges the critic with rape - an incident Antônio describes an act of love that resulted from passion and not aggression - intimate private business is bandied around the courtroom. (GT)