São Paulo, Incorporated

Carlos is a young middle class man in São Paulo. He works at a large company; the motor industry is growing, foreign capital is coming in and the city is changing fast. Carlos belongs nowhere inside it. He hates his job and cannot leave it. He marries; he carries the marriage the same way. He has an affair and that is no way out either. The narrative proceeds through his interior voice. At one point he decides to leave everything and go. Then he comes back. Luiz Sérgio Person directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Walmor Chagas plays Carlos and Eva Wilma his wife. It is a Brazilian production. The film takes the industrialising São Paulo of the sixties as its direct subject and the city stands at its centre. It was made during the Cinema Novo period; but its ground is urban rather than rural, which sets it apart. Its form is interior speech; the character's thoughts are heard constantly and contradict what he says. The matter it treats is what economic growth amounts to in a person; production rises and the character empties. It was shot in real locations and records the São Paulo of the period. Person made few films after this and died young in an accident. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow, the events few and the interior speech tiring. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and narratives grounded in the city. Who it is not for: it is slow, bleak, and the character repellent.