The Trespasser

Beto Brant's 2002 Brazilian film adapts a novel by Marçal Aquino. In São Paulo, two partners in a construction firm hire a gunman to kill the third. The job is done, but the gunman does not disappear; he installs himself in the company, then in the two men's lives, and then close to the dead partner's daughter. What starts as a crime thriller becomes a sharp piece about class, watching an order given from above travel back up from below. Paulo Miklos, who plays the gunman, is a musician by trade and this was his first film role; that presence from outside professional acting makes the character more unsettling still. It is short, fast and almost documentary in texture. Who it's for: viewers who like Brazilian crime cinema and films that handle class conflict head on. Who it's not for: anyone who needs a morally clean character to hold on to; nobody here is clean.