But one day a mother and son come by. The mother dictates a letter to the boy's father, who is far away and has not communicated with her. After a few abortive attempts to rid herself of this unwanted reminder of life and the world around her, Dora finds herself on an odyssey with the boy, guided only by the address on the letter, traveling cross country to take him to his father. The rest of the film is the story of that journey. And yet with all this material, all the power of its story and its principals, all the overtones in its portrait of a country determined to take everything from its poor and give only Jesus in return, the film is still slack and unfocused.
Every scene is static and ultimately lifeless.
We find ourselves fighting to keep our interest up when instead we should be swept away by the power and implications of the story and the characters. Salles has done everything right except direct it.