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Editorial Reviews
{Best Film -- 2003 Tolouse Latin American Film Festival}
{C.I.C.A.E. Award -- Forum of New Cinema, IFF Berlin 2003}
{APCA Trophy -- São Paulo Association of Art Critics Awards 2004}
Wellington (Chico Díaz) is a butcher in a slaughterhouse. His wife, Kika (Dira Paes), is a devout evangelical, given to wearing covered up clothing in a tropical city where skin is casually exposed all around. Wellington values his wife's religious conviction because it assures him of her fidelity, even as he carries on an affair with another woman.
Wellington delivers meat to the seedy Texas Hotel, whose flamboyantly gay cook, Dunga (Matheus Nachtergaele), lusts after the butcher to no avail. Aurora, an older resident of the hotel, is an asthmatic hooked on her oxygen tank, overweight, and terrified of the loneliness she suffers. Nearby, at a cafe, Ligia (Leona Cavalli), the barkeep, flaunts her sexuality even as she fights off the constant physical advances of the scruffy customers. One of those, Isaac, referred to as "the German," is obsessed with death, and buys bodies of newly deceased.
As the intertwined destinies of these "full dimensional people in touch with their explosive feelings" (New York Times) unfold, Assis offers a series of portraits of the people of this neighborhood--women and men, from children to the aged, of every shade of skin color. The hothouse atmosphere of Brazil comes alive in Mango Yellow, where lust and economic desperation combine in a volatile brew of provocative cinema.
{C.I.C.A.E. Award -- Forum of New Cinema, IFF Berlin 2003}
{APCA Trophy -- São Paulo Association of Art Critics Awards 2004}
Wellington (Chico Díaz) is a butcher in a slaughterhouse. His wife, Kika (Dira Paes), is a devout evangelical, given to wearing covered up clothing in a tropical city where skin is casually exposed all around. Wellington values his wife's religious conviction because it assures him of her fidelity, even as he carries on an affair with another woman.
Wellington delivers meat to the seedy Texas Hotel, whose flamboyantly gay cook, Dunga (Matheus Nachtergaele), lusts after the butcher to no avail. Aurora, an older resident of the hotel, is an asthmatic hooked on her oxygen tank, overweight, and terrified of the loneliness she suffers. Nearby, at a cafe, Ligia (Leona Cavalli), the barkeep, flaunts her sexuality even as she fights off the constant physical advances of the scruffy customers. One of those, Isaac, referred to as "the German," is obsessed with death, and buys bodies of newly deceased.
As the intertwined destinies of these "full dimensional people in touch with their explosive feelings" (New York Times) unfold, Assis offers a series of portraits of the people of this neighborhood--women and men, from children to the aged, of every shade of skin color. The hothouse atmosphere of Brazil comes alive in Mango Yellow, where lust and economic desperation combine in a volatile brew of provocative cinema.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lives of Quiet Desperation ...,
By
This review is from: Mango Yellow (DVD)
Mango Yellow provides a look into the lower class life in Brazil in the city of Recife. There is a surreal atmosphere to the film because the characters are eccentric and exaggerated to emphasize certain aspects of their behavior and personalities. It is a film which allows raw expressions of feeling by those who are on the economic edge of life. The viewer is first introduced to a waitress who may also be the bar owner.. She is tired of her job and the lifestyle she leads but continues on ... providing philosophical treatistes while she serves her customers their favorite beverage. Her bar is the local hang out for many people. She fights off the sexual advances of her customers while also testing her sexuality and appeal ... They come to her rescue when she is challenged by a new customer, not one of her regulars.
The viewer is introduced to several residents and employees at the Texas Hotel which is a seedy run down place, the only home to several unique characters. Isaac, also called "the German" has a peculiar fetish and obsession. It is very bizarre ... There is a lonely, elderly retired asthmatic woman named Aurora, who recalls her life during more exciting times. There is a gay cook named Dunga, who has the 'hots" for a heterosexual butcher named Wellington whom he knows he can not "have"... Wellington is shown doing his work at the local slaughterhouse where a cow is killed and butchered, all of which is graphcally shown. The gay cook knows Wellington is cheating on his wife Kika. Wellington is very proud that his wife is a very religious Evangelical Christian. She reveals during a discussion at dinner that although she can forgive just about anything, the thing she absolutely can not tolerate is infidelity. Dunga wants to create trouble in Wellington's marriage when he realizes he will never have a relationship the way he would like with Wellington. The cook sends an anonymous note to Kika, telling her about a rendevous between her husband and his lover, he provides the time and the location. It is at this point in the film when everything heats up and comes to a climax, literally and figurately. The owner of the Texas Hotel is discovered dead, likely of natural causes. Dunga is the only one who cares enough to find the priest and try to provide him a decent funeral and burial. Wellington is caught by his wife ... cheating with his lover. Kika engages in a most shocking un-Christian action. After this event, she walks home but is offered a ride by Isaac who happens to be driving by. The two of them engage in some very needy sexual behavior. The film concludes with the camera recording different people who live in the neighborhood going about their lives in their usual manner ... with some unsual musical accompaniment. This film records the desperate lives of people who live on the edge of survival and who have very little hope. It provides a glimpse into the bleak existence of many well fleshed out characters whose lives are very twisted and troubled ...This film will not appeal to everyone but viewers who like a strong film which makes a bold statement about life within a narrow part of the globe will appreciate this creative impression on celluloid left by the Brazilian director Claudio Assis. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The prison of Northeastern poverty seen through the panopticon of Southeastern cinema,
By Salty Saltillo (from the road, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mango Yellow (DVD)
This movie is part of an ongoing trend in Brazilian cinema (and arts) - the artistic representation of the low brow poor (in this case northeastern) other for the consumption of the high brow modern Brazilian art consumer. It is a motif of Brazilian art that goes at least as far back as Aluizio Azevedo's depictions of 19th century poor people in Casa de Pensao and o Cortico (and includes paintings by Portinari and books by authors like Graciliano Ramos). When done right, I suppose such art serves to bridge the gap between the represented other - the Sertanejo, the urban poor, the nordestino - and the art consumer - the urban Paulistano or Carioca moviegoer or book reader. When done right, the sophisticated, urban Brazilian consumer might feel more empathy with and sympathy for the social classes whose very selection as the object of artistic representation is testament to great distance that separates such modern, urban Brazilians from the people whose lives are represented in such films and books.
But this film does it all wrong. Every character in the film produces a certain repulsion in the viewer. We are shown the grotesque private perversions of each character, their crude habits, lack of manners, lack of morals, and secret fantasies - there is the necrophiliac, the drunken leftists, the girl who never wears panties, the girl whose sexual fantasies include raping a man with a hair brush handle, the uncontrollably faithless and disloyal husband, the corrupt city bureacrat, the ridiculously stereotyped gay cook, the hotel owner who uses his underwear as a wallet, the old lady who masturbates with an oxygen machine, the girl who can only form sexual and emotional attachments to married men... the list goes on. The style of the plotting was very Altman-esque, but that where Robert Altman sought to give a cross-section of society in "Short Cuts", here we are left with Azevedo's "O Cortico" recreated as the "Texas Hotel" and "Avenida Bar" in the 21st century. This movie is just a widening of the psychological gap between rich and poor, nordestino and Paulistano/carioca, a gap that continues to warp Brazilian social life. It is disappointing to see artists reinforce so many stereotypes in their art.
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Day In The Life: A Lot Happens, But What Does It All Really Mean?,
By K. Harris "Film aficionado" (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Mango Yellow (DVD)
2002's "Mango Yellow" represents one day in the lives of a diverse group of interconnected characters. It's fair to say that no one is particularly likable, and that might limit your emotional connection to the movie--but the actors are good and the various plot threads are well integrated. At the end of the day, there isn't a big message of import. The film is content to just showcase one day much like any other. There is drama, comedy, death, adultery, seduction, and a alluring wildness to the proceedings. The film kept me fitfully entertained even if it doesn't amount to a whole lot. Ultimately, though, that's kind of the point. KGHarris, 8/11.
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