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Should Nothing Else Work Out
(Se nada mais der certo)
Directed by José Eduardo Belmonte.
Written by Belmonte, Luis Carlos Pacca.
With Cauã Reymond, Caroline Abras, João Miguel.
Brazil, 2009. 120 minutes.
Screening at the MOMA Premiere Brazil film festival.

Should Nothing Else Work Out is a languorous work about optimism in people who have every reason to give up hope. Set in São Paulo, the movie depicts the intertwining lives of three characters on the brink of penury. They each long for the warm embrace of middle class life as they plunge deeper and deeper into poverty. Leo is a handsome, poorly paid journalist who has recently lost his money in a tax scam. Marcin is a teenage happy-go-lucky coke dealer and huckster. And Wilson is a morose taxi driver who totes around the pistol with which his father committed suicide.

Their various get-rich-quick schemes haven’t worked out, nor does it appear they will anytime soon. Leo’s girlfriend is addicted to coke, Marcin’s hook-up thinks she’s too flashy to keep dealing, and Wilson is in danger of losing his taxi cab. Yet somehow they believe that things will get better.

Happy Brazilians

Brazilians are known for their optimism and ebullience. We think of them as being passionate and festive, and when they’re sad, outwardly tearful. Their feelings are easy to read. Social studies have even shown that Brazilians touch each other more than any other culture in the world. (The Japanese touch the least, if you’re wondering.)

But not every Brazilian is this way. The country suffers from one of the largest income disparities in the world, and poverty remains an ineluctable trap. Not all Brazilians like to dance.

That is why Should Nothing Else is a vibrant film: it explores the lingering optimism that can be found in hopeless situations. According to the director José Eduardo Belmonte:

Leo (played by Cauã Reymond) is bright and charismatic, but his journalistic idealism isn’t putting food on the table. Too righteous to engage in upper class bribery, he feels that his only recourse is to turn to a life of crime. The coke dealer Marcin happily obliges him, using his handsome face to win new cocaine customers. They succeed swimmingly. Soon each theft inspires a larger one and within a short while they decide to pull off their biggest heist yet — to rob the greatest of the thieves, the politicians.

Jump Cuts

Anyway, that is the grand narrative, but in truth the film is much more episodic. The camera hovers close to the actors at all times, spinning with them as they reel in the vertigo of bankruptcy. The scenes feel like semi-autonomous vignettes that only connect loosely with the whole narrative. This episodic sensation is heightened by the fact that the director uses very few establishing shots to ground the story. Everything appears close-up and the few distant shots are depicted from the point of view of the characters. There are also a few shifts in time that are difficult to follow.

The effect is a disjointed work that requires some staying power to finish. Indeed, I would even say that this film gets better once you’ve finished it. This sounds like something the baseball player Yogi Berra would say (”No one goes there anymore because it’s too crowded”), but I mean that the choppy narrative becomes excusable when you can delight in the shorter scenes.

Marcin

Of the various performances, the androgynous Caroline Abras (Marcin) is the most compelling. She displays an innocent commitment to looking on the bright side of life that is endearing. The taxi driver Wilson, played by João Miguel, could become a memorable character but never really comes out of his shell. The role of the journalist Leo is the most complex, because he must undergo a series of internal changes, and the actor Cauã nearly pulls it off. I just found it difficult to believe that he would consistently choose poverty when he had the option to enter politics or journalism, because he seems so desperate to stay off the streets. I also couldn’t understand why he would stay with his sultry, drug-addict girlfriend Angelina. If Angelina possesses any redeeming qualities, we never see them.

Lots and lots

Should Nothing Else Work Out covers a lot of ground. It is at once a tale of friendship, a gangster film, and a love story. It also depicts a little discussed aspect of Brazilian society — that slippery morass between living hard and living comfortably.

I don’t like to say that a film attempts to cover too much, because that is usually the audience’s problem, and not the filmmaker’s. But this film asks you to work hard. If you go, go patiently. You will not dance to samba. You will not sing. But you might get a taste of Brazil.

–Deji Olukotun

*My translation from the Portuguese. From an interview with Globo.