Product: Me You Them (2001)
Rating: 4.0
Pay attention: this is not about libido
Brazil has always had a fine movie production, these last years maimed by lack of money, some bad productions and unbelief from the local population - concerning the movies, not the country. Even so, "Cidade de Deus - City of God", "Central station - Central do Brasil" and "Behind the sun - Abril despedaado", being very good productions, made the brazilian movie industry be seen by the international audiences again as a potential region for good entertainment and excellent movies."Me you them - Eu tu eles" follows the settings chosen by Walter Salles in his two masterpieces: the brazilian northeastern region, land of many natural beauties, but also a land of poverty, dryness, abandoned by local authorities and with a lifestyle that has not evolved in more than a hundred years. The main character is Darlene - Regina Casé; the movie tells her story, from being abandoned in her wedding to living with three men - Lima Duarte, Stenio Garcia and Luiz Vasconcelos - and four children in the same house.For those of you who don't know them, Stenio Garcia and especially Lima Duarte are two of the foremost brazilian actors, with many natural acting resources, having played hundreds of different characters along their careers. Regina Casé is a funny woman with a solid comedy and hostess career. The casting is very good, and they portrait real situations in the screen with astonishing accuracy. The cinematography is very well researched and produced, and many international viewers - as well as brazilian ones, in fact - gasp in wonder at the sight of the dry and barren beauty of the settings.But if you have seen this movie and think it's a light comedy about a promiscuous woman, you're completely wrong. This is a life-portrait about power, and what you can do to revert a low situation. Darlene cannot openly confront Osias, her first husband. He's powerful, old, respected, has a thundering voice and commands at will. She seduces Zezinho, Osias' cousin, and Ciro, the field-worker, not because she wants to have plain sex, but because that's the way she has to show everyone that, in the end, she will get what she wants, which is to have a good life. That's so true that when she leaves the house, Osias runs after her and tells her to go back.So, to analyse this movie with such shallowness is, to say the least, temerary. This is not an action flick, it's a deep portrait of lives in a forgotten land, with touches of drama, comedy and love, such as life really is.Grade 8.2/10