Men and Women

Walter Hugo Khouri's 1964 Brazilian film follows two middle-class men who bring two women to their flat for a night, and takes place almost entirely there. The expected pleasure does not arrive; as the night goes on the conversation turns bitter and the emptiness in all four lives comes out. Against the social realism of Cinema Novo, Khouri followed a path closer to European modernism, and this film is the best-known example of that strand. The influence of Antonioni and Bergman is plain: long silences, cramped framing, no outside. Norma Bengell and Odete Lara are strong. The film's limit is that the women remain surfaces reflecting the men's crisis. Who it's for: viewers curious about the strand of Brazilian cinema outside Cinema Novo and about sixties modernism. Who it's not for: anyone wanting incident, or troubled by women characters constructed as functions.