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 Even if Cidade Baixa (Lower City) were only a love story, it would still be a fine film. Love remains as the only form of transcendence available in our privatized lives: the more vile our public life becomes in Brazil, the more inflated our romantic imagination. If Cidade Baixa did nothing more than feed our insatiable hunger for love stories, spiced with nice erotic moments, it would have been more than we expected.
But I don't know if this would justify the prize awarded for best film by the jury and public of the latest International Show in São Paulo. I think that the film by Sérgio Machado goes beyond this.
Real malandragem is living. (Mano Brown)
I see more than just a convincing love triangle in Cidade Baixa, I see an epic which takes place amidst sordid lives. What brings an epic quality to the film, in spite of the insignificance of the characters - a prostitute starting out in life and two friends who survive by transporting cargo, illicit or otherwise in a boat in the Recôncavo Baiano - is the permanent struggle of the characters to resist the violence which seems to be predestined as a part of their lives.
A struggle which surprises the viewer. The plot seems to be leading us to a predictable outcome, to the fatal Brazilian-style dénouement for all conflicts, whether romantic or not, above all among the miserable inhabitants of "low" cities.
We expect bloodshed, we expect to enjoy the terrible image (always) of a man dying at the hand of his neighbor. We expect to leave Cidade Baixa with the usual cliché: the film was a "punch in the solar plexus".
I wonder why this expression became one of approbation: why do we as movie-lovers love to get hit in the solar plexus? Does a film have to crush us morally, force us to pay for the conformity with which we accept, outside the cinema, the violent consequences of Brazilian social inequality?
In this case, the masochistic expectations of the viewer are frustrated. It is true that from the opening scenes on enjoyment charges its price in blood. The excitement at the cockfight is a foreshadowing of death. We do not know if Deco (Lázaro Ramos) killed the drunk who knifed Naldinho (Wagner Moura). Deco himself does not seem to know. But we know that blood and rivalry feed eroticism.
It is just that Karina (Alice Braga) does not fit into the stereotype of the femme fatal excited by the violence which she provokes in men. Karina does not want to be quarreled for in life-or-death terms. I will go so far as to say that the character falls in love not with one (or the other) of the friends, but with the strong bond that unites them.
And for this reason she is incapable of choosing between them, feels anguish at the prospect of being the destroyer of friendship. The change of position for the female character - from professional to lover- takes place in the scene in which she observes Deco, moved and relieved, place his hand on the chest of his friend whose life is no longer in danger. In spite of having had sex professionally with the two protagonists, it is at this moment that Karina gives herself, with urgent passion, to Deco.
The ménage à trois continues in this vein, in which sexual stimulation is always tempered with anguish, fear, rage, affliction - and happiness. Eroticism is transformed into love a a consequence of the peak experiences which the trio shares. It is as if love appears to them as the overcoming of misery, as protection, meaning, shelter. And so it is necessary that it include the three of them.
The trio of friends/lovers/rivals take desire to its ultimate consequences. But who said that the ultimate consequence must necessarily be murder? We are so habituated to our own fatalism, in cinema and in life, that it is does not seem realistic for the friends to step back a few minutes (or a few frames) before they destroy themselves.
Cidade Baixa wagers, very delicately (yes, it is possible to speak of delicacy amidst sex and fury), that an ethics of friendship still sustains that which remains of civilization for us. The final scene suggests a fraternal pact sealed with blood, while the glances slowly lower their arms, meet each other, shelter each other. Deco, Naldinho and Karina are heroes because they resist what seems to be, in Brazil, a predestined and destructive fate.
Deco and Naldinho do not kill each other because they don't want to, in the same way that Naldinho steps back from the possibility of killing the sales clerk at the drugstore in a robbery. Karina, the pivot, a little whore in love with the two friends, tries to avoid having jealousy end in tragedy. None of the three desires death: the film is directed by the life drives. It is a matter of Eros, not of Thanatos; Eros in all his fury and splendor.
It is worth pointing out something which distinguishes this film and recent films from Rio/São Paulo: Salvador has not yet banished all its poor. The lower city (unlike Pelourinho, post-restoration) still belongs to the people who have always lived there.
The reference to the friendship among the protagonists, childhood friends, shows that part of the population of Salvador has still been spared the apparently inexorable disterritoralization which affects social connections of belonging and support among the poor in the capitals of Brazil. The lower city belongs to the blacks, the poor, the Baianos. Thus, a socialization which is less violent, even if outside the law.
The film ends with documentary scenes of daily life in the narrow alleys of Salvador, where the residents pass distractedly, contemplate Bahia through their windows, converse with neighbors, walk leading their children by the hand. They are anonymous street scenes, consoled with a toada, in the style of a slave's lament, sung by the black voice of Carlinhos Brown.
Maria Rita Kehl is a psychoanalyst, writer and poet, the author of three books of poetry and the books of essays A mínima diferença-o masculino e o feminino na cultura. She was born in Campinas, São Paulo state, in 1951 and is a doctor of clinical psychology. You can reach her emailing mritak@uol.com.br.
Translated from the Portuguese by Tom Moore. Moore has been fascinated by the language and culture of Brazil since 1994. He translates from Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and German, and is also active as a musician. Comments welcome at querflote@hotmail.com.
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