Growing up in a slum of Rio de Janeiro

Rating: 9/10 (23 June 2005)

Call it my penchant for sunny places, or for sharp editing... or for growing up movies, or for a new appreciation of realism... I found all of these in this movie.
The casting is excellent, the pace perfect and the narration varies between a wry that's-the-way-it-is attitude and auto-derision.
Also, it's impressive the way that the narrator restricts himself to relatively brief comments that help stitch pieces rather than indulging any desire to weigh in with moral judgments - a temptation difficult to resist for some, yet once you're done watching the movie, you realise how short-sighted and knee-jerk your initial reactions were, how pointless really, when confronted with such situations.
And the soundtrack has everything - quick-paced beats to heart-rending pieces and some great oldie goldie disco hits too. Even "Kung-fu fighting"! The music, the sunlight and the warmth/heat were, for me, the three big non-textual cues permeating this movie.
I might even have given this a 10 except for a few John Woo style cuts here and there (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, just a personal aversion, that's all).
I saw it dubbed in French without subtitles, so cannot comment on the quality of the dubbing in other languages. In French, it was quite well done, I thought - and that's not always the case! This also means that I cannot warrant for the quality of the delivery of the actors or of the narrator. What I heard in French was good, but I have no idea what it sounds like in Portugese.
Give it a shot.