The Priest and the Girl

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's 1966 Brazilian film is among the plainest and hardest works of Cinema Novo. A young priest arrives in a small town in Minas Gerais; his arrival already unsettles the conservative atmosphere, and it becomes a crisis when he is suddenly drawn to a young woman there. The forbidden attachment turns quickly into unrestrained passion, and the town answers it with its own moral order. Andrade takes his starting point from a poem by Carlos Drummond de Andrade and builds the story almost entirely on glances and silence; there is little dialogue and the camera stays still for long stretches. The black-and-white photography and the provincial landscapes give the film the air of a religious painting. Unlike the political strand of Cinema Novo, the subject here is repression and the body directly. Who it's for: viewers interested in Brazilian Cinema Novo and films about the tension between religion and desire. Who it's not for: anyone wanting dialogue and incident, or who will find slow, silent storytelling wearing.