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Central Station (Central do Brasil) - Walter Salles, Fernanda Montenegro, Vinicius de Oliveira
Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
Every so often, a film unexpectedly appears from a remote corner of the world to capture the imaginations of audiences everywhere. Honoured with a Golden Globe as Best foreign language film and featuring an unforgettable performance by 1988 Academy award-nominated Best actress Fernanda Montenegro, this acclaimed film sensation is a profoundly moving story about the triumph of the human spirit!
Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) is a lonely and cynical older woman who spends her days unhappily writing letters for illiterate customers at Rio de Janeiro's main train station. But things begin to change when she reluctantly befriends a homeless orphan, Josué (Vinicius de Oliveira). When she agrees to help Josué's search for the father he's never known, Dora also rediscovers something she'd thought was lost forever: her heart!
Persons of interest
- Fernanda Montenegro .... Dora
- Marília Pêra .... Irene
- Vinícius de Oliveira .... Josué
- Soia Lira .... Ana
- Othon Bastos .... Cesar
- Otávio Augusto .... Pedrão
- Stela Freitas .... Yolanda
- Matheus Nachtergaele .... Isaías
- Caio Junqueira .... Moisés
- Walter Salles .... Storywriter
- Marcos Bernstein .... Screenwriter
- João Emanuel Carneiro .... Screenwriter
- Walter Salles .... Director
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
I saw poverty.
Having been raised on a diet of Hollywood dreams, I have developed an expectation that any film or video will be about rich people in rich countries where they can dash about not locking their cars and never running out of money (unless the baddies Cancel their credit card, but that's only temporary).
Vinicius was 10-years-old and working as a shoeshine boy when he approached Walter at the Rio de Janeiro airport. After testing against more than 1500 other actors for the role of Josué, his performance was so convincing that he was immediately given the part. That's hunger. That's determination. That's a desire to perform. Even better, Walter made the right choice: Josué is a hard, innocently worldly boy on the edge of manhood and Vinicius portrays that perfectly. He is a gutsy, hungry actor with the face of an angel and a future as high as the sky.
Fernanda's Donna Dora is amazingly nasty. She treats Josué and everyone else with contempt, even her best friend Irene. She hits people (including Josué), she shouts at them, she lies, she steals... and throughout it all she maintains an air of invincible righteousness. That's not something Hollywood actresses can do; maybe it's the Latina blood coming out. whatever the reason, she is queen of this film.
The story, unsurprisingly, is not what you'd expect (yeah, yeah, tautology be damned): at several points during the movie I expected it to veer off into Hollywood cheese, but it never did, it just kept grinding through ever poorer and poorer parts of Brazil until it finally reached the end of the line. No guesses for what happens there.
Central Station (Central do Brasil) is the kind of film that activates your heart (hold the cheese) while stimulating your brain. Enjoy.
Security censorship classification
M (Adult themes, low level coarse language)
Surveillance time
109 minutes (1:49 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
Film: 15 December 1999
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