The Best Things in the World

Mano is fifteen, is learning the guitar, and is trying to be noticed by a girl at school. One day he comes home to find that his father has left his mother to live with a man. What follows runs on several lines at once: bullying at school, a first sexual experience, his relationship with his older brother, and not knowing what to do with what his father has said. Laís Bodanzky directs from a screenplay by Luiz Bolognesi, based on the Mano book series by Gilberto Dimenstein and Heloísa Prieto. The film's choice is to treat the father's coming out as a fact rather than a crisis. Mano does not accept it, gets angry and is ashamed; but the narrative takes his side without blaming the father, and leaves the boy's confusion where it is. The school passages are the hardest thing in it. The bullying is filmed realistically and is not resolved. It won a large number of awards at the Grande Prêmio do Cinema Brasileiro, including best film and best director. Denise Fraga plays the mother, Caio Blat the father and Fiuk the older brother; Francisco Miguez plays Mano. Who it is for: viewers who like Latin American films about adolescence and drama about a family changing shape. Who it is not for: the narrative carries too many lines at once and leaves some of them unfinished, and the use of music is overemphatic.