Buccaneer Soul

Carlos Reichenbach's 1993 Brazilian film follows a friendship spanning many years. Two intellectuals track one another from youth to old age, with fifty years of the country's political past running behind the relationship. The film does not give its periods in order. The narrative proceeds through flashbacks and imagined scenes; military rule, censorship and the later opening appear inside the characters' everyday decisions. Reichenbach was known for joining popular genre to experimental form. The tone is scattered and the humour black; the narrative reaches no large conclusion and stays deliberately irregular. Who it's for: those who like Brazilian cinema and formal experiment. Who it's not for: viewers expecting an orderly narrative; the film keeps its structure deliberately loose.