Cama de Gato

Plot synopsis:
Imagine a strong and tender hearted woman, a confused man, and a villain capable of anything for money. We have the perfect love triangle for a classic love story. Cat‘s Cradle tells the tale of a man that hits rock bottom and manages to bounce back through true love. Gustavo, once a poor, kindhearted youngster, is now a successful entrepreneur in the perfume business but has turned cruel, arrogant, and miserable. Alcino, his best friend and business partner, helped him achieve his present success. When Alcino finds out that has a fatal disease and has a few months to live, he decides to play a prank on Gustavo to help him rediscover the decent man he once was and the joy of living he once possessed. Gustavo is married to Veronica, a rich, selfish, spoiled, and ambitious woman who has never loved her husband. Alcino's prank takes an unexpected turn when Veronica, the story‘s great villain, interferes, manipulates the surprise, and makes Gustavo lose almost everything after being taken for dead and accused of a crime. While trying to pick up the pieces of his life, Gustavo meets Rose, a simple, hard-working woman who raises four kids by herself with great spirit and optimism. Because of her good heart, she starts to help Gustavo to put his life back together. Gradually, Gustavo and Rose develop feeling for each other, leading our hero to rediscover his humanity through the hands of this newfound love. A contemporary and urban soap opera, Cat‘s Cradle blends suspense, plot twists, surprises, redemption, and romance to produce a stirring story of love, life, and rebirth. Cat’s Cradle: An entrapment opens the doors to redemption.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
Unspeakably bad, verbose, pretentious moralist trash.
Though I'd heard that "Cama de Gato" was the worst Brazilian movie of the decade, I watched it giving it a chance; after all, first-time director/producer/writer Alexandre Stockler managed to make his debut feature (shot in video) for just US$ 4,000 and -- though it looks even cheaper -- I can't begin to imagine all he went through to finally get it exhibited in theaters with no big sponsors or production companies behind it (then as I watched it I realized why).
But whatever chances you're ready to give to "Cama de Gato", they shrink to zero within 10 minutes: it's an unbelievably preposterous, verbose, ideologically fanatical and technically catastrophic attempt to portray Brazilian upper-middle class youth as a bunch of spoiled neo-Nazis hooked on bad sex, drugs and violence (and they're made to look like closeted gays too), made with no visible trace of talent, imagination, expertise or notion of structure.
Visually and aurally, it recalls the worst amateur stuff you can find on YouTube -- only here it lasts NINETY TWO (count'em) minutes of unrelenting hysteria and clumsiness, and it's not even funny-bad.We've all seen the story before: bored young guys want to have fun, go partying, take drugs and everything goes wrong -- there's gang-rape, spanking, murder, the accidental death (falling down the staircase!!) of the mother of one of the boys, culminating with the boys deciding to burn the corpses of the girl and the mother in a garbage landfill.
Moral and literal garbage, get it?
The film is heavily influenced by Larry Clark (especially "Kids" and "Bully"), but Clark's films -- though also moralist and sexploitative -- are high-class masterworks compared to this crap.I don't think there was ever such monomaniacal drive in a filmmaker to stick his ideas down the audience's throat: Stockler grabs us by the collar and tries to force his non-stop moralist rant into our brains by repetition and exhaustion -- you DO get numb-minded with so much babbling, yelling, inept direction, shaky camera and terrible acting going on.
Stockler doesn't care a bit about technique (the quality of the images, framing, sound recording, soundtrack songs, dialog, sets, editing, etc is uniformly appalling), but he's a narcissistic control-freak: he anticipates the criticisms he's bound to get by adding subtitles with smartie/cutie comments, and by making the protagonists comment at one point how far-fetched and phony it all is (I could relate to THAT).
Despite his megalomaniac ambitions, Stockler seems incapable of giving us a minimum of visual or narrative structure -- he can't even decide if he wants gritty realism (hand-held video camera etc) or stylization (repetition of scenes, use of alternate takes, etc).
Damn, he can't even decide WHERE to put his camera (there's use of subjective camera for the THREE leads)!
The dialog features some of the most stupefyingly banal verbosity ever; the plot exists simply to justify the director's profound hatred for his characters and what they stand for.
All you see is a filmmaker being hateful, preachy, condemning, moralizing without the benefit of a minimum of talent (or technique) to go with it.It's very disappointing to find Caio Blat in this mess.
Certainly one of the most promising young film actors in Brazil, with his sleepy-eyed puppy dog looks and emotional edge that often recall Sal Mineo's, Blat can be highly effective under good direction (as in "Carandiru", "Lavoura Arcaica", "Proibido Proibir").
Here, he's told to go over the top and he has to play with some of the most embarrassingly under-equipped "actors" in recent memory.
He also enters the risky realm of graphic sexploitation scenes (so goddawful they look rather like web-cam porn).The film opens and ends with real interviews with "typical" (?) middle-class youth -- Stockler wants us to take those interviews as "proof" of what he's trying to preach in fiction.
But he blatantly despises and makes fun of his interviewees, selecting a highlight of abject, racist, sexist, stupid statements (which only shows assholes exist everywhere).
Stockler wants to prove that Brazilian middle-class youths are ALL present or future fascists BECAUSE they're middle-class and enjoy recreational drugs (is he saying all neo-fascists are on drugs??
Or that drugs potentialize fascist behavior??
I couldn't tell).
With its dogmatic self-righteousness, headache-inducing technique and mind-bending boredom, "Cama de Gato" is bad for a 1,000 reasons but, above all, it's harmful in a very insidious manner: it gives detractors of Brazilian cinema a powerful case of argument.
"Cama de Gato" is best unwatched, unmentioned, buried and forgotten..
Overrated Pretentious Crap.
In São Paulo, the upper middle class teenagers Cristiano, Chico and Gabriel have just joined the university and on the eve of the opening class, they go to a party with drugs and booze.
On the next day, after their classes, the date of Cristiano in the previous night comes to his house and the three friends rape the girl.
The girl dies, they panic and decide to get rid off the body, but Cristiano's mother arrives, startles with Gabriel and rolls the staircase, breaking her neck.
The trio decides to dump and burn the corpses in a garbage landfill, but along the night other tragedies happen.The polemic and shameful "Cama de Gato" is an overrated pretentious crap about alienation of the youth, and is certainly the worst Brazilian movie that I have seen along many years.
The shallow, tragic and dark story is actually a black humor comedy of bad taste.
The screenplay is not funny, with stupid lines and dialogs, and boring, manipulative and silly footages with interviews with morons teenagers in the beginning and in the end.
The acting is terrible, apparently with many improvisations, but no talent, and I was disappointed with presence of the promising Caio Blat in this trash.
The camera, framing, cinematography and edition are amateurish and of very low quality.
The sound is awful and in many parts it is impossible to understand what the actors and actresses are speaking (probably it is a plus, since this flick sucks).
The gang bang is very realistic and used to promote this mediocre movie in a very poor marketing of sex-exploitation.
My vote is one (awful).Title (Brazil): "Cama de Gato" ("Bed of the Cat").
Good Directing.
Bad Acting..
"Cama de Gato" shot with practically no money, is the first feature lenght film from director Alexandre Stockler, and it covers one wild night in the life of three teenagers and the terrible consequences arisen from their what they consider "fun".While the necessity of such a film is dire, and it its pacing and mise én scene works remarkably well for such a small picture, the lack of preparation the actors had great hurts the experience.The portrayal of the three teenagers is stereotyped, bi-dimensional, unrealistic and even childish at times.
The three are rarely believable, including the experienced Caio Blat.One again, this film shows us how Brazil is filled with courageous and creative Directors, who unfortunately don't pay enough attention to the acting in their films.
This is a prime example of why "City of God" appealed to so many and why other films don't.Overall, a worthy attempt.
I shall be patiently waiting for other films related to the TRAUMA manifesto.6.5/10.
Maximum of Audacity, Minimum of Money.
I took the DVD by chance to home and had a wonderful surprise.
Well, there were some good reviews made by critics from important Brazilian papers and that was the only reason why I decided to watch it.
But, anyway, it didn't look very attractive to me at first sight.After the first 20 minutes, I thought "Damn, it's just another movie about teenagers snorting coke and stuff like that".
However, in the end of the movie, I was just like: "Jesus!
How could this man make such a great film with so little money?!" It's obvious that a film with practically no resources (13,000 Brazilian Reais, what, in 2002, was about 4,000 US dollars) has its defects.
The photography lacks quality and some dialogues are unnecessary.
But these "problems" only contribute to bring us the "Audacity" that Alexandre Stockler looks for.
The Brazilian director created a manifesto called TRAUMA (in English, Trying to Realize Anything Urgent with a Minimum of Audacity).
In Cat's Cradle there's certainly much more than a "Minimum of Audacity".
Using black humor and social criticism, Stockler alerts us about how sadly nihilistic and hedonistic our society became.
Although the movie may sound pessimistic, its realization shows the director's belief that it's still time to think what we want from our lives.
Let's wait for Alphavella, Stockler's next project.*If you have the DVD at home, take a look on the extras where you'll find an interview with the director and the complete interviews with young people which appear during the beginning and the end of the movie..
Cama De Gato (Cat's Cradle) is the best Brazilian film I've seen in the last 10 years.
It's very deep and still very funny, like the Brazilian society is, with all it's problems but still a great country with great people, but probably the worst politicians on earth.
Cama De Gato does not try to show the things differently as they are in reality, it makes philosophy with the ordinary life of three young upper middle class teenagers that get into big troubles just because they were looking for a "bit of fun"...
Very impressive and important film to understand a little more about this very complex society.
I'm very interested in Alexandre Stockler's next project..
One of the Best Brazilian Films ever.
Cama De Gato is probably the best Brazilian film ever.
It's funny, intelligent and make you think about the teenagers of the Brazilian upper middle classes that many times do stupid stuff with other people only because they know that their parents will do everything do let them free from the jail bars.
This film was censored in the Brazilian Theatres, but after long time in the Internet it became a big independent hit in Movies Theatres, DVDs and Internet.
Cama De Gato is one of the most important film made in Brazilian Film History.
The actor are great, the director is fantastic and the plot is amazing.
Simply the Best!
Simply the Best!
Simply the Best!
You can't miss it!