Meninas Não Choram

Pipa is sixteen and the best player on the school football team. She collapses during a match and is diagnosed with leukaemia in hospital. The treatment is long; her hair falls out, she is cut off from school and the team goes on playing without her. In hospital she meets Beca, also in treatment and in a worse condition. The two girls make their own order in the corridors. Pipa wants to go back to her life outside and slowly learns what going back means. Vivianne Jundi directs. Leticia Braga, Duda Matte, Cauã Martins and Alana Cabral are in the cast. It is a Brazilian production. The film is a remake of a Dutch film from 2012. The matter it treats is illness swallowing an identity; in everyone's eyes Pipa was a footballer first and then became a patient. The film uses women's football not as background but as the character herself. The narrative keeps the hospital sections realistic and does not avoid the detail of the treatment. The friendship between the two girls is at the centre and the film does not romanticise it. The family line stays weak and the parents are thinly drawn. The film steers with emotional music. The ending gives no easy recovery. Its limit is predictability; the narrative is familiar, the characters simple, and the ending expected. Who it is for: viewers who like coming of age drama and sports stories. Who it is not for: it is sad, predictable, and the ending bitter.