Mango Yellow

There is a hotel in the old centre of Recife; broken, dirty and full. Dunga, who runs the place, wants the cook and gets nothing back. Kika, a devout woman, spends her time at church, and her husband Wellington is a butcher; he cuts meat, drinks, and beats his wife. Lígia works at the bar and speaks to no one. There is also a man who works at the morgue; he spends his time with the dead and it comes naturally to him. One day these lives cross on the same street. Cláudio Assis directs. Matheus Nachtergaele, Jonas Bloch, Dira Paes, Chico Diaz and Leona Cavalli are in the cast. It is a Brazilian production and is set in the historic centre of Recife. The film won the C.I.C.A.E. prize in the Forum section at the Berlin Film Festival and took a prize at the Brasília festival as well. It is counted among the first works of the independent vein that grew in Recife. Its form is in pieces; there is no single event, the characters cross, and the narrative becomes the description of a place. Colour is an instrument inside it; the yellows are deliberately dense and the rooms shown as spoiled. The narrative does not judge its characters and saves none of them. The film was argued over on release for its coarse language and its scenes of sex and violence. Its limit is the watching; the narrative is harsh, the characters unlikeable, and the film lets you breathe nowhere. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and hard urban narrative. Who it is not for: it is coarse, episodic, and the ending dark.