Renato Coutinho Movies

Jack Noah (Richard Dreyfuss) is all actor: Self-possessed, obsessive, vulnerable, and an addict for praise, his soul burns with "the craft." Having just finished a grade-Z straight-to-cable crime thriller in the fictional South American country of Parador, he gets the ultimate acting challenge (though it's more like an offer he can't refuse) from Roberto Strausman (Raul Julia), the Paradorian dictator's chief advisor. The challenge: impersonate the country's dictator, whose just died. Strausman knows just how to manipulate Noah: He takes him to a meat locker, shows him the director's body (actually Dreyfuss' brother, Lorin), threatens to kill him, and he brings clips of Noah's best reviews. Thus enticed, and bearing a striking resemblance to the man, Noah accepts the job. Under the exacting direction of Strausman, he follows the script precisely. Noah immediately enjoys the job's perks, not least of which is the dictator's scorching mistress, Madonna (Sonia Braga), but of course cannot conceal his real identity to her. A close call with Parador's revolutionaries and Madonna's brimming social conscience push Noah to take command of the role. He starts pushing a kinder, gentler social agenda, and incurs Strausman's wrath. It begins to look like Noah will play the dictator's last act, but a chance meeting with a stunt man friend (Michael Greene) inspires a caper that will change all of the characters' fates. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., Rovi

Lucelia Santos plays the controversial Luz del Fuego in this film about the Brazilian striptease maven who performed with equally naked live snakes, in an era (the 1950s) when striptease, with or without live snakes, was a social pariah. She went on to found a nudist colony on an island in Rio's Guanabara Bay, and was regularly linked with one prominent politician or another. The cause of her death in the 1960s has never been revealed. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Based on a play by Nelson Rodrigues, the Kiss turns like a whirlwind around one innocent act: after an accident, a dying man is kissed by another man, out of compassion -- but this unusual gesture violates an ingrained social taboo that colors everyone's perception of what exactly happened. The man, Arandir Tarcisio Meira is hauled off to prison by corrupt police, and while he remains incarcerated, a journalist picks up the story and becomes obsessed with showing him up as a homosexual. The journalist himself is hardly a paradigm of mental stability, being tormented by the memory of how he had let his own son drown without doing anything to help him. His attacks ruin Arandir's life and when he finally gets out of prison, there is almost nowhere to turn. Arandir's father-in-law, with his own demons driving him to action, perceives him as the cause of his problems, and sees him as a way to exorcise his own inner torment. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi