Between Us

In 1992 seven friends, all of them young people with claims to be writers, spend a weekend at Silvana's family house in the country. Each writes a letter about what they expect from the future; the letters go into a box that is buried, to be opened in ten years. An accident happens the same day and one of them, Rafa, is killed. The group meets again at the same house in 2002 and opens the box. Paulo Morelli and Pedro Morelli direct; they are father and son and wrote the screenplay together. The cast includes Júlio Andrade, Caio Blat, Carolina Dieckmann, Martha Nowill, Maria Ribeiro, Lee Taylor and Paulo Vilhena. The narrative moves between the two times, and the comparison is its instrument: what the young people wrote stands beside who they became ten years later. The idea is not disappointment but accommodation. Nobody has met with catastrophe; none of the life they wrote down happened, and none of them says it aloud. The dead friend sits at the centre as an absence, and why the group broke apart is not fully explained until the end. It competed in Première Brasil at the 2013 Rio festival, where it won best supporting actress, best supporting actor and best screenplay. It opened in cinemas on 27 March 2014. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian independent drama and stories about friendship across time. Who it is not for: several of the seven stay thin, the narrative is slow, and the template is familiar.