VIPs

Marcelo grows up in the provinces. His father works near an airstrip and the boy watches the planes. Nobody teaches him to fly; he learns on his own, by watching and from manuals. Then he leaves home. He flies for smugglers. At some point he discovers something else: people do not ask him who he is, they believe whatever he says. He says he is a pilot and is believed. Then he says larger things. He says he owns an airline, then that he is the son of a well known man, and each time it is accepted. Toniko Melo directs. Wagner Moura plays Marcelo. It is a Brazilian production. The narrative rests on a real person; Marcelo Nascimento da Rocha lived under many identities in Brazil and the affair was widely reported. The real man appears briefly in the film. The matter it treats is the wish to believe; the film shows the fraud as an emptiness rather than a skill. The narrative does not defend the character and does not hide the price of the crime. The flying and smuggling sections come early and set the register. Wagner Moura's performance carries the picture. Its limit is structure; the narrative proceeds in pieces and the character's inner life stays incomplete. Who it is for: viewers who like Brazilian cinema and true stories of fraud. Who it is not for: it is shallow, the pace uneven, and the character unexplained.