Reginaldo Farias Movies

A man who has just met his fate looks back on the life he's just completed in this historical comedy-drama based on a novel by Machado de Assis. 19th century tycoon Cubas (Reginaldo Faria) has just died, and his spirit takes a long look back on his life and his loves, as he courts a number of beautiful women in his youth -- including a lovely but greedy prostitute (Sonia Braga) -- and later in life strikes it rich by creating a popular patent medicine, Bras Cubas Poultice. The younger Cubas is played by Petronio Gontijo); Andre Klotzel directed and adapted the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The torturing of prisoners in the 1970s is the focus of this film that was banned in Brazil, and banned at Cannes or in private screening rooms by the head of the Embrafilme studios who paid for Pra Frente Brazil. The former head of the studio was fired for making the film. The story concerns a man who is picked up by the police because they mistake him for a terrorist. As he is brutalized in a dungeon-like setting, the people in the streets are celebrating Brazil winning the 1970 World Soccer Cup in Mexico. In this story of mistaken identity, the torturing is laid at the feet of paramilitary forces hired by a corporate world to fend off guerrilla attacks on their properties and persons. This did not sit well with the Brazilian leftists who complained that no word was said against the government using torture, or about the fact that it still goes on. The movie also did not sit well with the rightists who do not like torture portrayed against a paramilitary group that might as well stand in for one of their organizations, and the film certainly did not meet the approval of the government. That leaves a few film critics, who seem to think that the director Roberto Farias - and the group of his relatives who contributed in various ways to the film, did a rather decent job of it, as far as filmmaking goes. This movie won the Gramado Film Festival prize in 1982. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This romantic situation comedy finds a young playboy being given advice by his older divorced friend. The mentor's liberal language about love quickly changes when the playboy ends up dating his daughter. He tries to convince his older friend he is really in love with the girl, but the protective father is skeptical. Roberto Carlos provides the rocking rhumba and rock rhythms for this reel ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

When a dying man receives a kiss from a bereaved man who tries to save him, the man is jailed as a homosexual. He is released from jail, but his life has been ruined by the incident -- and the man eventually is killed by his own father-in-law. The kiss that resulted in the eventual persecution and death of the man is never shown in this plodding, downbeat drama. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

1962 is known as the year of Cinema Novo -- the year that the Brazilian film movement broke. Roberto Farias was the author of an influential essay that laid the groundwork for the movement's profound economic model and later became the head of Brazil's national film distribution agency Embrafilme. As a director, Farias produced a number of compelling films in the Cinema Novo style -- loose, edgy editing coupled with stories that reveal the contradictions of Brazil's society. Train Robbery Confidential takes the stock plot of a train robbery a turns it to serve the ends of social commentary. Tiao Medonho is an easygoing gang leader with big ambitions but few plans. After stumbling upon a group of fellow petty criminals, they let Tiao in on their plot to rob a mail train carrying a month's worth of pay out to Brazil's rural areas. The robbery comes off without a hitch and the group splits up each to live the lux life. It doesn't last, however, (when does it ever?) and the police begin to zero in on Medonho. At the film's climax, his partners execute a kind of justice which serves as a revolutionary allegory and as a critique of a society that drives its poorer members to crime. ~ Brian Whitener, Rovi