Cannes. Linha de passe.

"Twelve years after co-directing Foreign Land, filmmakers Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas have returned to update their portrait of urban Brazil, which they left in the economic throes of president Fernando Collor," writes Deborah Young in the Hollywood Reporter.

"Linha de passe is a far more successful film, both as a drama and in depicting the reality of growing up poor without no future in sight.... Comparisons to Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers are inevitable, but without name actors in the cast, this is not going to be as easy a commercial ride as Salles' cultish The Motorcycle Diaries."

In Screen Daily, Jonathan Romney finds in the film "a down-to-earth alternative to the more romantic and stylistically flashy films (City of God, Lower City, Berlin winner Elite Squad) with which Brazilian cinema has been identified lately. Very much in the mode of Salles' 1998 breakthrough Central Station, Linha de Passe offers a compelling cast and a narrative fail-safe - the travails of a tough mum and her unruly brood - that should give it modest but significant international appeal."

"[B]leak, bleak, bleak," blogs the Boston Globe's Ty Burr. "Salles can really make movies, and he just lovingly ground my face in this one."

Competing.

Update: "In essence, the filmmakers' list of society's scourges would be led by fatherless families, too many babies and drugs, an analysis that provides solid intellectual footing for a story that strongly links the general with the specific," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy. "Structured by month, from May through September, the film intricately intercuts among events, both significant and banal, in the five protrags' lives.... Title, literally translated as 'Passing Line,' is a Brazilian soccer term for players passing the ball from one to another without letting it touch the ground, a notion that poetically evokes the structure of the film itself."

Updates, 5/18: At indieWIRE, Anthony Kaufman finds this one "an accomplished, though unremarkable competition film that never rises above its familiar tale of a poverty-stricken family."

Erica Abeel talks with Salles for the IFC.

Updates, 5/19: "The directors show through their story the lack of choices facing Brazil's young people and its consequent results, but the tone of the film is also hopeful," writes Kim Voynar at Cinematical. "The film is part of a larger project; Salles and Thomas plan to follow the changes in Brazilian youth and society at 12 year intervals, making four more films together exploring similar themes. If the next four are as good as Linha de Passe, we have much to look forward to."

The Telegraph's Sukhdev Sandhu finds Linha to be "a superbly-handled ensemble piece that paints an insightful and compelling portrait of life in São Paolo."

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Coverage of the coverage: Cannes 08.

Last year: Cannes @ 60. And Cannes 06.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 17, 2008 7:01 AM