Interview. Andrucha Waddington.

"I had a dream of the images in Woman in the Dunes and the images [producer Luiz Carlos Barreto] described. So I woke up the next day with this thing in my head and I called him and I said, 'Listen, Carlos, let's make this movie, can I come to your house now?' He said, 'Okay, come on!' And I came to his house. He cancelled all the things he had scheduled, and then we started to talk about the film. We cleaned the table and we said, 'Okay let's go.'"

Andrucha Waddington not only tells Hannah Eaves about the making of his House of Sand, but also about the past, present and future of Brazilian cinema.

Related: Andrew O'Hehir in Salon: "The House of Sand is without doubt the most prestigious production to emerge so far from Brazil's booming film industry, and I have to say I have mixed feelings about it.... Think Antonioni and Kurosawa, with liberal dashes of The Piano and Woman in the Dunes. Hell, there are worse things."

Updated through 8/14.

Rob Nelson in the Voice: "The current scarcity of art-house cinema that favors poeticism over plausibility works to the great advantage of a film that's old-fashioned even in its thematic concerns."

Eric Kohn in the New York Press: "Andrucha Waddington's subtle direction creates a moving multigenerational tale of stray souls destined to wander the barren Brazilian desert in hopeless search of civilization. There is lyrical profundity in nearly every frame, conveyed with broad strokes of glittering humanity."

"[S]tunningly beautiful, but it has the whiff of a vanity project for all concerned," notes the AV Club's Tasha Robinson.

Update: Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres "undertake not just two performances, but a suite, the harmonies and counterpoints of which are both subtle and breathtaking," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "At first House of Sand may seem like a stark tale of survival, but a surprisingly lush and colorful romance blossoms in its bleak and gorgeous desert setting."

Updates, 8/12: "As visually lush as it is existentially Beckettian, House of Sand is essentially a story of things not happening, and Áurea is a study in what happens to even a protean human will when it's chastened by larger forces," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "Heartbreaking and strange, House of Sand is as original as it is lovely."

"[A]bsolutely wonderful," declares Christopher Campbell at Cinematical.

Update, 8/14: Michael Guillen said he would and he did: a Q&A. "Andrucha explained again that the film was about the place these women had come to, not where they had come from. The seminal idea revolved around Áurea originally not belonging to this place, to this house of sand. By the time she accepted her destiny, she had become part of this place and there was no reason for her to leave anymore. "So that's why," Andrucha concluded, shifting to the next question."

Posted by dwhudson at August 11, 2006 7:14 AM