Madame Satã

In the Lapa district of 1940s Rio, João Francisco dos Santos cooks, dreams of the cabaret stage and fights when he has to. He is Black, gay, illiterate and looking after seven children. Things with the police never improve. The film is not interested in stage life. It is interested in survival braided into rage: onstage João can be himself, on the street he has to fight constantly. The film makes him neither victim nor hero and lets him carry both. The form is close and hot: narrow streets, night, sweat, handheld camera and faces held very near. The cabaret passages are bright and the neighbourhood scenes are dark. It is Karim Aïnouz's first feature. The character is real: João Francisco dos Santos, known as Madame Satã, a Rio legend who spent much of his life in prison. The film screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2002. Lázaro Ramos leads, in the role that launched him. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and hard portraits drawn from life. Who it is not for: anyone wanting orderly narration. The film proceeds in fragments, its jumps in time go unexplained and the violence is sudden and graphic.