Eduardo Nunes’ Tiger entrant is a haunting enigma wrapped up in sumptuous visuals. By Edward Lawrenson
“The film is a real puzzle,” says Brazilian director Eduardo Nunes of his feature debut
Southwest. “You have to put together all the pieces.”
Sure enough, there is a slow-burning sense of mystery to this drama set among a community of impoverished and superstitious rural folk around the turn of the last century. In the atmospheric opening scene, a pregnant woman called Clarice dies during childbirth in a ramshackle boarding house. Later that day, the film introduces us to a young girl, raised by an elderly woman – labelled a witch by the local villagers. The girl is also called Clarice. As the day progresses, Clarice turns into a beautiful young woman – and there are further transformations to come. Is this character the same woman who died in the first scene? And why is she ageing much more quickly than the people she encounters?
To reveal more would be to risk ruining the haunting appeal of Nunes’ storyline, but there is a satisfying and moving dream-logic underlying the enigmatic tale. And all the while, there is the shimmering beauty of Nunes and DoP Mauro Pinheiro’s black-and-white ‘scope photography. Shooting in an abandoned village near salt-flats north of Rio, the movie’s visuals are breathtaking. The long-take camerawork is virtuoso. The compositions are elegant and precise.
“Originally, I wanted to make the film in colour,” Nunes says, “but the cinematographer persuaded me to do it black and white. It’s not a realistic story, he said, it’s like a fable.” Shot on 16mm, the film also makes the most of the texture of its celluloid. “We don’t have a digital release print,” says Nunes. “The print we have in Rotterdam is one of only six that exist!” The extremely elongated scope compositions are best appreciated on the big screen, too. “It’s so difficult to show it on DVD. I joke that when you show it on a laptop you have to use two and put them together to watch the film!”
Rotterdam is a kind of home-coming for the affable and ebullient Nunes. “After playing a couple of shorts here, I won a Hubert Bals award for this project. That was eight years ago! In Brazil, the film is quite different from most other movies, so it took a long time to raise the rest of the funding.” He continues: “When I showed the project to local funders, they said they weren’t interested. I just heard ‘no, no, no’ for eight years. In fact, I rewrote the script eighteen times during this period – it changed, but not much. Finally, the Ministry of Culture said ‘OK, take some money!’ So we made it on quite a low budget: around $500,000.”
Nunes also has a project in CineMart this year.
A Happy Death is based on an early, unfinished novel by Albert Camus, and Nunes discusses the project with evident enthusiasm. The option he and his producer Patrick Leblanc (who also produced Southwest) have has a two-year limit, so Nunes hopes to make the film more quickly than his impressive debut.
More on Southwest here.