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Capitu and the Chapter (Julio Bressane, 2021)
🕑 Added 2021-06-04 03:53:19 +0000 UTC
Alas, this is my first exposure to Bressane, possibly the key Brazilian director of his particular era. That era, incidentally, is the post-Cinema Novo movement known as Cinema de Boco do Lixo, or the "Mouth of Garbage" Cinema. Bressane's best-known film remains his 1969 cri de coeur entitled Killed the Family and Went to the Movies, one of the key works of Boco do Lixo. Unlike a lot of other filmmakers from that group, Bressane has remained active and even evolved into something of an old master. However, as his films have gotten more overtly arty, they seem to have fallen off in terms of audience and festival interest. Bressane is arguably even more marginal now than he was back then.
Based on Capitu and the Chapter, I maybe see why. First of all, there is a pun in the title that doesn't really come across in English. The Portuguese title is Capitu e o Capítulo, and refers both to one of the female leads, Capitu (Mariana Ximenes), and the fact that the film is frequently punctuated by digressions featuring a writer / historian / librarian (Enrique Diaz) who waxes theoretical about some of Brazil's 19th century Romantic poets. Given this punctuation, each of the segments of the main narrative, involving a four-way crisscross of amorous attentions, might be considered a "chapter."
Capitu is never boring, exactly. It actually has a lot of good ideas, most of them related to Bressane's complex use of sound design. The two couples are featured in a dance sequence without music, with Ximenes and Vladimir Brichta doing ballroom while Josie Antello and Saulo Rodriguez are cutting a mean rug right next to them. Bressane amplifies the thuds and squeaks of the dancers' feet hitting the floor, heightening the surrealism of the moment. Also of note is Brichta's performance in the final third of the film when, consumed by jealousy, he suffers a kind of breakdown, lumbering around like Frankenstein's monster while everyone else behaves normally (relatively speaking).
Still, Capitu is not a particularly good film. Part of this is due to the borrowed stiltedness that is its primary m.o. For something so devoid of naturalism, it seems oddly familiar, and that's because Bressane's film strongly resembles second-tier Raúl Ruíz, with some declamatory, planimetric sections that tip a wide-brimmed hat to Manoel de Oliveira. The most noticeable departure from these allusive styles comes when Bressane inserts older found footage without warning. As it turns out, these are all clips from earlier Bressane films, and perhaps if I were more familiar with his work, this self-tribute wouldn't seem so unwarranted. Ultimately, Capitu is a film with a lot of odd ideas, presented in a recognizable art-film vernacular, but nothing hangs together very well.
Comments
Michael Sicinski
Thanks for your remarks; I definitely got a sense that there was a Larger Project at work that I did not have the background to fully access. Part of this is undoubtedly my lack of familiarity with Brazilian lit, and I am almost certain that you're right about it being a de Assis reference. But more than that, I think if I had a broader sense of who Bressane is and where his aesthetic moves come from, he might very well seem less derivative. And despite my misgivings, the new film is certainly more compelling than, say, the last Carlos Diegues film, as far as old masters go. So I plan to take some time and dip into his work again, probably with Killed the Family.
Chris Stults
This is fascinating to read. I've really been wanting to dig into Bressane more (and finally got a copy Killed the Family earlier this week). The last thing I saw was Sentimental Education a number of years ago. It was glorious on 35mm and really tapped into Deren-esque psychodrama and early cinema techniques in unique ways. Oh, wait! Just remembered that I saw a more recent Bressane, Seduction of the Flesh, on MUBI. It was definitely more stilted but also so bugfuck that I remained riveted throughout. I wonder if Capitu is a reference to the main female character in Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro, one of the most iconic and ironic writers in classical Brazilian literature. He would also fit in well with the Criterion Channel's current Home Movies series, making most of his work at his house with family and friends.
