Parahyba Mulher Macho (1983)

On the eve of the October, 1930 installation of Getulio Vargas as a dictator in Brazil, a leader of the opposition Liberal Alliance Party was murdered. This imaginative and well-wrought, fictional film is about the indirect involvement of Anayde Beiriz (Tania Alves) in that murder, but rather than focus on the political consequences, the film concentrates on the personality and character of the woman herself. Anayde was not bound by puritanical or religious restrictions in her relationships with men, and so her affair with the journalist Joao Dantes (Claudio Marzo) was sexually liberated for its time. Dantas had tight political connections with the military head of the Republican Party, making his own politics clear - what is less clear is the motivation for his subsequent actions. When the leader of the Liberal Alliance Party invades Dantas' apartment and makes public intimate letters and photographs of his relationship with Anayde, the journalist tracks down the man in a restaurant, and kills him. Since the dictator Vargas was supported by Dantas and considered a fascist by many, the underlying questions about Anayde are whether or not she could be considered "liberated," or was she simply a product of one time, one political outlook, and one place? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi