The Kiss

A man crushed under a bus asks the stranger beside him for one thing before he dies: a kiss. Arandir gives it to him, and his own life ends at that moment. The tabloid press takes the story, the neighbourhood believes what it wants to believe, and his father in law behaves like a man who has been waiting for exactly this opportunity to destroy him. Bruno Barreto adapted the Nelson Rodrigues play and keeps the writer's usual concerns intact: repressed sexuality, hypocritical morality, and the speed at which a society disposes of a person. What lands hardest now is the newspaper thread, which shows how a story gets manufactured and how a lie proceeds to confirm itself. Tarcísio Meira, Ney Latorraca, Christiane Torloni and Lídia Brondi fill the cast. Its weakness is the stage origin. Certain scenes still sound spoken to a theatre, and the ending states its case too openly. Who it is for: viewers who follow Brazilian cinema and stories about public shaming. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a quiet drama.