Jogo de Cena

The director places an advertisement in a newspaper: women who wish to tell their life stories are sought. Hundreds apply. Some are interviewed, and the interviews are filmed on a theatre stage in an empty auditorium. Then the film does something: professional actresses tell the same stories. Which is which is not said. Listening to a woman, the viewer does not know whether she owns the story or is performing it. Eduardo Coutinho directs. The idea is to question documentary itself. Coutinho spent years recording what people said to camera; here he tests directly how reliable that method is. The result is surprising: what the actresses say sometimes sounds more convincing, and that becomes the real subject. What the women describe is heavy: the loss of children, violence, poverty and loneliness. The film does not dramatise it; the camera is fixed, the hall is empty and the only material is a face talking. Coutinho is the central figure of Brazilian documentary and this counts as the most self aware example of his method. The narrative offers no resolution anywhere and who is who is never explained. Who it is for: anyone interested in documentary form and the line between fiction and the real. Who it is not for: it consists entirely of talk, it is visually static, and nothing happens across its length.