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House of Sand (Widescreen)

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CASA DE AREIA ('HOUSE OF SAND) is a masterpiece of filmmaking from Brazil. Written by Elena Soarez and Luis Carlos Barreto the story seems more a magical metaphor than a tale of real life - until the film concludes and the immediacy and universality of the messages haunt the viewer's mind for hours. It is a film directed by Andrucha Waddington with a cast of superb actors but the focus of the film, the films central character, is the bleak isolation of the sweeping desert of Northern Brazil.

The film opens in 1910 with a caravan of wind swept characters appearing in the distance of the dunes of the desert, a group of wayfarers apparently escaping the poverty of the bog city to find a home of their own, land that can be called something that belongs to them. They are led by Vasco de Sá (Ruy Guerra) and his wife Áurea (Fernanda Torres) and her mother Dona Maria (Fernanda Montenegro), both of whom plead with Vasco to let them return to the poverty of the city instead of being forced to attempt to exist in the sands of the windy desert. Vasco is determined, builds a house, forces the women to live there and the others to pitch tents to exist. Áurea becomes pregnant, Vasco is confronted by the real owners of the land led by Massu (Seu Jorge), and must trade his possessions to remain in his 'home', a home which crashes around him leaving Vasco dead and Áurea and Dona Maria to fend for themselves. The others desert the two women and the women find their only help in Massu.

Time passes slowly (to 1919) and the changing sands begin to bury the house. Áurea, now a mother of a daughter Maria (Camilla Facundes), finds a telescope and sets out to see if she can find its owner and a way out of the desert. She encounters a group of scientists photographing the solar eclipse, a group protected by Luiz (Enrique Díaz) who bonds with Áurea, has a night affair with her, and then promises to take Áurea, her old mother Dona Maria, and her young daughter Maria to the city. Áurea sets out for her house only to find it now covered with a dune, her mother dead and her daughter Maria traumatized: the chance for escape is gone.

We move to 1942 and daughter Maria is now a woman (played by Fernanda Montenegro) who has bonded with Massu (now played by Luiz Melodia) and her sensual daughter Maria (played by Fernanda Torres) are still waiting for the return of Luiz. The older Luiz (Stênio Garcia) returns and Maria seduces him, even though Luiz knows she is his old lover's daughter. He returns to the house, meets the 'Áurea/Maria' he loved and ultimately agrees to take the younger Maria to the city: the older Maria elects to stay with Massu. Again time leaps to 1970 and the younger Maria in hippie outfit drives out to see her mother (both Marias are now played by Fernanda Montenegro) and the reunion of hopes and dreams of over 60 years are realized in a manner that brings the film to a haunting conclusion.

The cast is extraordinarily fine, blending into the movement of nature and symbolizing the elements of love, longing, loneliness, destiny, and survival. The repeated use of the two major actresses is a stroke of genius: we are caught up in the intuitive understanding of all the manifestations of these two women over time as they change roles not only as actresses but also as blending characters.

In a fine touch of genius, the films credits are rolled as Brazilian pianist Nelson Friere plays the Chopin 'Raindrop Prelude'. It is a moving ending to a magnificent film. Highly recommended. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Grady Harp, December 06

Epic is often something we attribute to lengthy films or ones that have a cast of nearly a hundred or more. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) quickly comes to mind. It had an all-star cast and a run time of over 220 minutes. DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (1965) is another, clocking in at just over 190 minutes. Then there's the more modern "epics" such as GLADIATOR (2000) that comes in at 171 minutes.

But run times are only a portion of what makes an epic an epic. THE HOUSE OF SAND runs well under two hours (115 minutes), but spans multiple generations, covering over 60 years. And although The House of Sand teeters on the verge epic-ness, it misses the mark ...but only by a hair.

Visually breathtaking, The House of Sand focuses on the lives of three generations of women. The first generation is forced into a little known desert area of Brazil where a man named Vasco (Ruy Guerra) leads a ragtag group of settlers on a quest for land to call their own. With him comes his wife Aurea (Fernanda Torres), a young woman of an arranged marriage. Also with him is Aurea's mother, Maria (Fernanda Montenegro). The group of settlers quickly learn the inhospitable nature of the area and all of them flee, except for Vasco, Aurea, and Maria. But Vasco soon dies in an accident, leaving the mother/daughter team to fend for themselves. Luckily, there's a group of former slaves eking out an existence nearby. Massu (Seu Jorge) is one of these tough ex-slaves, and he takes a liking to Aurea (as do several other men who live or happen upon this sandy area).

As time passes, Maria falls in love with the dunes and the simplicity of the area. But Aurea begs to leave. She wants for the excitement of a city with people her own age. Several options for freeing herself from the boredom of the sand appear and just as quickly evaporate, stranding her year after year in the desolation. One time, however, a young officer in the Brazilian Army visits the area with scientists who are marking an eclipse of the sun, and a quick one-night-stand results in a pregnancy. The officer leaves and Aurea is once again stuck in this place. Her daughter (Maria) grows and looks exactly like Aurea. And as Aurea ages, she has a striking resemblance to her mother, Maria. Roles get reversed after Aurea's mother's death in a sand slide. Aurea must now be the responsible mother to her daughter Maria. But Maria's life in this place is adding up to zero. Sound familiar?

The circular pattern of family has been done before, but never on par with this. The sweeping vistas, quiet yet constantly shifting sands, and the pressing of dunes on everything (including the women's relationships) make this film a very good story. But not a great one.

The short run time forces two quick decade leaps that are, to say the least, jarring and confusing. Also, the excellent cinematography lingered just a bit too long on occasion whenever sweeping scenery presented itself ("Yeah, that's beautiful ...still beautiful ...yep, still great ...is it still on the screen?")

This is one of director Andrucha Waddington's first feature length films and one can't help but be impressed by his able hands on the helm. It is a magnificent piece of cinema that needed just a few touch-ups in order to be "Epic."

I have never reviewed a movie before and won't really now except to suggest that this film, intentionally or otherwise is a a marvelous, deeply spiritual film. It's very aridity and sparseness; its tearing asceticism in the cell that is the beautiful, silent dunes is a cry of conscious creation looking for fulfillment and except for love, finding only sand.

I cannot speak for the writers, and perhaps this review is more about me, but this searing movie is a deep treatise on vanity; the vanity of Ecclesiastes; inching painfully, almost lifelessly along in time yet jolting into new lives, new eras, new vanities,this film speaks its deep, dare I say religious truth that the material, the ephemeral, yesterday's "new" passion, cannot even begin to fill the living soul.

Escape. Fly from our existential feet of clay to the moon and still, you will find there to your surprise, that all around you is the same dust and sand.

The sole hint of exception to this reality that so mocks our new cars and modern gross conceits, our scientisms and inane philosophies of the ephemeral and merely material, is the love.

Love appears, noticeably in the stories of those wanderings in the deserts real and metaphorical, partial and distracted love, normal human love, though it be. Practical and temporal or eroticly passive and disconnected from our internal law, its appearance howsoever fractured and incomplete nevertheless hints at what is not just sand, not just vanity, not just dead.

Only the love, fractured and disjointed for these people wandering aimlessly in the desert is not sand, and life in the end must be about love, or sand. The comings and goings of war and science and moonshots is just background noise and distraction, a further background vanity to the great silent and interior story played out in our minds and hearts.

All the rest is just so much sand. In our cells; in our deserts, we can only strip away the vain and hope to find the silent presence of love, the the sublime principle of unity and sole hope of meaning. This is no sloppy, decadent erotic escapism, but love that is about responsibility for and commitment to life, and lifegivers emerging through the grains of sand that seem to comprise our hourglasses of life. The quiet, almost inaudible voices of the great spiritual seekers and leaders of human history resonate in this powerful meditation.

Gently we are led to realize that this path can offer any hope of freedom from the ubiquitous, grating, wearing and temporal tyranny of sand. And we are reminded that despite our longings, it has the power to swallow and smother us if we can only see the sand in the hourglass of our lives, an not the love that gives it glimpses of meaning

I loved this movie.

Paul

If you like fast action movies, this one is not for you.
But this movie has the most gorgeous photography and
enough surprises to keep you entertained. Not too much
dialog, so it's easy to follow the sub-titles.

HOUSE OF SAND was a surprise Brazilian film that far exceeded its neo-realistic goal and turned into a lush visually rich saga of three generations of women living in the vast desert wastelands of northern Brazil.

Anchored by veteran actress Fernanda Montenegro (in multiple and multi-generational roles) this film was amazingly filmed in the highest definition for commercial cinema under extremely challenging desert conditions. I have seen Fernanda Montenegro in another highly acclaimed film "CENTRAL STATION", where she reached up to wider emotional palate.

In HOUSE OF SAND, Mnntenegro has almost allowed the shifting desert sands to become a co-actor in telling this powerful intergenerational story spanning a period from 1910 through 1960.

Indeed, the film-maker's first stroke of genius in choosing a 2K high-definition format to film this ensured that each grain of sand was clearly visible as the dunes shifted in the winds devouring all forms of shelter forcing the extremely poor inhabitants of the land to move away constantly from its path.

The resulting visual impact of the story is like very few films I have seen. I suspect, barring documentaries, not many feature-filmmakers would bother to use a desert location as vast and as barren to tell such a rich visually stirring film, resisting the use of artificial studio sound-stage and sets. Instead recreating an entire desert settlement at a remote location hundreds of miles away from nearest civilization is a testimony to the director's conviction to this production.

BE SURE TO WATCH THIS FILM ON A GOOD LARGE-SCREEN HDTV AND YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I MEAN !!!

Enjoy My Other Film Recommendations at My Films Blog
PRASCHAUDHURI ON WORLD FILMS [...]

House of sand (or Casa de Areia) is a broad sweeping movie that feels longer than it's 2 hour run time, but not in a bad way. This is a film that manages to cover 3 generations of women and their lives in a barren Brazilian desert.

In the beginning, a semi-crazed man named Vasco leads a group of servants, along with his wife and her mother, to a remote desert location for unknown reasons. When they are approached by a pack of former slaves, all of Vasco's paid workers grow frightened and leave. Then Vasco dies in an accident. This leaves Aurea and her mother Maria abandoned and alone in a desolate location.

This is combined with the fact that Aurea is pregnant and cannot easily travel any great distance. Aurea and Maria stay in the desert and during an unshown time-lapse of around ten years, Aurea's daughter Maria is born, while her mother Maria passes away. Aurea is still searching for a way back to the city that she longs for.

Events transpire, however, that lead her to want to stay. Time lapse again and young Maria has grown up, while Aurea is now an older woman. And now the young Maria longs to be away from this desert home.

The interesting part of the film is that the same two actresses (Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres) are used for the various generations of women. This makes for an interesting visual story, although it can be a bit confusing since the time lapses aren't explicitly explained.

By the end, the theme of the movie is clear, and although the message may not be entirely new, it is presented in a subtle, moving way.

The broad, sweeping shots of the landscape are incredible, and their beauty and simplicity add so much to the movie the cinematographer deserves much commendation. It's a visually stimulating film with great acting and a great story, what else can you ask for in a film?

This is one of those few movies worth buying, owning. Montenegro and her daughter are just overwhelming... I have always held Montenegro for one of the best american actresses, American in the broad and true sense of the word.

Can't comment on the DVD features, as I had the pleasure of catching this at the local art theatre. Just wanted to comment on the wonderful lingering effect this film had on me.

The movie follows a husband and wife (with her elderly mother) along with their crew back in 1910 as they venture out into the Brazilian deserts to settle at a spot in which the husband believes to be a sort of paradise. After the crew escapes and the husband becomes vicious and insane, the pregnant wife and her mother find themselves alone in the desert as the husband dies in a mishap.

The story then follows the three generations of women who struggle to escape the sands. The film spans about 50 years and features tons of foreshadowing and existential musings along with some excellent performances. This is a fine South American piece up there with Central Station and City of God.

A must see for all lovers of fine film.

In 1910, a woman and her mother are stranded in the Brazilian desert, and are forced to make a home out of a house, far from modern civilization, which is literally sinking in the sand. Director Andrucha Waddington's allegorical sand swept domestic epic of a woman searching for a home where the heart is, moves through three generations of hardship, lust and love, and the pursuit of a freedom as evident and unreachable as the moon. Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres make a compelling mother and daughter team, (in real life they are indeed mother and daughter), and aside from an unconvincing account of a girl becoming an aimless, boozing flirt, after witnessing a lovemaking session with mommy and stepdad, the film is a beauty, probing gently into one's time and place on our civilized planet.

Vasco leads his wife, Áurea (Fernanda Torres) and her aging mother (the very talented, Fernanda Montenegro) to desolate parts of Maranhão desert (strikingly beautiful and rugged). They come across what seems like a tiny creek amongst sand dunes and decide to call it their base. Things start going wrong right away as they get unwanted guests (village locals). Vasco manages to barter a deal with the locals and sells some of his animal stock to get building material for a house. Áurea attempts to bribe members of Vasco's caravan (by slipping them some money) to help her escape back to civilization. However, they double-cross her and run away with the remaining livestock and the money. Vasco in a fit of rage slips and falls to his death. Áurea (pregnant) & her mother are stranded in the desert.
This marks the beginning of a saga for them as they struggle to build a shelter. Helps comes from a diffident local called Massu, who offers them some salted fish and also plants a palm tree in front of Áurea's house. A working relationship develops between Áurea and Massu's family. Years pass by. Áurea's daughter has grown up & her mother aged. However, Áurea never abandons hope and attempts to leave the desert; though her mother doesn't want to leave any more. One day, Áurea walks far and away from home and reaches a small camp that is being run by visiting scientists. An officer from the group promises to drive Áurea back to civilization. Áurea is delighted and runs back to her house. However, shifting sand dunes have crushed the house, killing her mother. Her daughter survives.
Áurea loses hope and whilst in deep sorrow enters into a relationship with Massu. The reserved Massu is selfish doesn't tell Áurea about the caravan's return and seals her chance of getting back.
Áurea's daughter doesn't approve of her mother's relationship with Massu and grows up to be a rebel with a passion for casual promiscuous relationship with local men. Years pass by. Áurea & Massu have grown old and her daughter has grown up (the daughter's role played now played by Fernanda Torres and Áurea's by Fernanda Montenegro). Now, Áurea is the one who doesn't want to return. One day, the caravan of scientists returns yet again. Áurea's convinces the officer to take her daughter back to civilization.
Years pass by and Áurea's daughter returns to the small village (now played by Fernanda Montenegro) to meet her mother. She tells Áurea that man has reached the moon. Áurea asks her if they found anything over there. "Dust" replies her daughter.

The story is weaved like a spiritual parable. This is especially true about the concluding dialogs around man's conquest of moon and finding dust (which seems rather surprising to the women who have spent a better part of their lives in dust/sand-ridden desert). The movie is very slow and long silent shots. There are moments, when it'll seem irritating, but then there are moments when it'll seem pleasantly philosophical and beautiful. However, it ends on a philosophical note. We humans are searching relentlessly for happiness in far-away place when in reality it is all around us in subtle and hidden forms. The highlight of the movie is the surreal landscape and effortless acting by Fernanda Montenegro.