Don Flor's passions In the 50s and 60s, the defining movement in Brazilian cinema was the Cinema Novo movement, the founders of which were attracted by revolutionary cinema both in spirit and in form. Brazil has been portrayed as a poor country full of violence, poverty and hunger. When the military dictatorship came to power in 1964, Cinema Novo ceased to exist. Screens are filled with detectives, westerns and musical comedies with a plot that develops, as a rule, against the background of the carnival - the so-called "Shanshads". And since the early 70s, Brazilian comedy acquires a strong erotic coloration, and the so-called “pornshanshads” are released on the screens at full speed – paintings with an unambiguous pornographic shade. It was during this period that the film of the young director Bruno Baretto “Dona Flor and her two husbands” was released, which became a national treasure of Brazil and was popular with audiences around the world.
To achieve success, Bruno Baretto had all the necessary components: a best-selling novel by a popular Brazilian writer, a master of “magical realism”. – Jorge Amadou; temperamental beauty, the national sex symbol of Brazil – Sonia Braga; one of the favorite Latin American actors of his generation – Jose Wilmer; colorful and memorable supporting characters. The whole narrative is well saturated with pleasant music (the soundtrack is based on the famous Chico Buarque song “O Que Sera”), seasoned with a kind portion of humor, good-natured irony, incendiary rhythms, excitement, passion, and other savory seasonings: the naked body of the beautiful mulatto Braga, hot bed scenes and a small pinch of magic.
The plot of the film develops in one of the poor neighborhoods of Salvador da Bahia against the background of bizarre South American life. It was here, on the square “Second July”, in the midst of the carnival, died “joke and wizard” Valdomiro dos Santos Guimaraens (Jose Wilmer). He is Vadinho, aka Gulyaka - a merry man, a drunkard, a gambler, a spender and a womanizer - the first husband of Don Floripedes Paiva Guimaraens (Sonya Braga), the hostess of the culinary school "Taste and Art". After his death, Dona Flor married apothecary Theodora (Mauru Mendonsa). With a new husband, prosperity comes to the house, calm and order reigns.
The film can be divided into 2 parts: the life of Dona Flor with Vadinha, and life without him. And, if the first takes place in the fiery rhythms of Brazilian salsa, like a hot carnival night to the sounds of a street orchestra, with fireworks, crazy dances and drunken antics, the second is a dull starry night with serenade of toads and frogs on a moonlit swamp. We observe the evolution of Dona Flor from a modest and decent, submissive girl suffering from love and despair, to an adult, wiser woman, but still suffering, now from tranquility, from a routine and measured life, tossing between the call of the heart and the rules of decency. We make a fascinating journey into the mysterious world of the female soul, observe the contradictions of female psychology and the ambiguity of female desires. Constant drinking, partying, casinos - that's all Vadinho was capable of. A man lost to a decent society. A man who got bored of family life on his wedding night, ran out of bed from his young wife straight to the casino. A man who was not ashamed to ask for a loan from everyone, up to the abbot of the church. A man capable of losing everything to the last thread and going through the whole city in whatever you have to (but how wonderfully it was done!) Sins and vices performed by Guljaki do not repel, but on the contrary - fascinate, cause a smile. A quiet life with such a husband can only dream. He had only one virtue: the ability to bring paradise pleasure in bed. But it was not the passion of the only one who wanted to live Dona Flor. The poor thing suffered from a lack of warmth, family comfort. She wanted to sit next to her loved one in the evening, listen to the radio or read the newspaper. She found all this with her second husband.
Theodoro Madureira is the absolute opposite of Guljak. He is a respected person in the city, decent, caring, reliable. It would seem that this is happiness! Finally, everything became “like people”, which Flore always dreamed of. But it wasn't! She had little passion, she had little peace. Fresh caresses of Theodor, served in measured portions, slow, measured sex on a schedule (on Wednesdays and Saturdays), in complete darkness, in pajamas, under the cover of a sheet, are not comparable to the hot embrace and sexual pressure of Guljaki, who was a noble lover. Outside - the calmness of standing waters, inside - a hurricane of passions. That's how you describe Dona Flor's condition. It would be great if by day her husband was an exemplary family man Theodora, and at night - unceremonious lecher Vadinho! And the gods heard the call of a woman. Guljak returned as a ghost. And dona Floripedes, ignoring the rules of decency, accepts his love. Only now her female happiness is as close as possible to the ideal. It does not matter that it can only be one in two persons.
The whole story of two marriages and the unusual love of Dona Flor unfolds against the backdrop of the contrast between the life of the common people and the petty bourgeoisie. In the image of the main characters, the popular element encounters a gray bourgeois environment and a bourgeois worldview. Guliaca and his whole company - drunkards, gamblers, musicians, dancers, prostitutes and other poor people - this is the bright personification of the Brazilian common people living a real life full of fun, carnivals, gambling, cachasas, superstitions and love affairs. They are simpler, much brighter and more interesting than members of the higher class (incarnated in the image of Theodoro, who has all the features of a staid representative of the petty bourgeois), with their boring, devoid of true values, limited and full of prejudices, life. But only together, and "up" and "lower" create a shimmering polyphony tropical serene paradise, called Salvador da Bahia, so alive in their inhabitants. With their help, director Bruno Baretto managed to fully convey a kind of semi-real-semi-imaginary world of magical realism by Georges Amadou, in which reality is closely intertwined with fantasy. Fantasy is as real as reality itself.
The film turned out to be truly Brazilian - light, bright, carnival, skillfully balancing on the verge of reality and fiction, and extremely erotic. It may look a little old-fashioned now, but it's pretty cute.