Me You Them

In a rural village in northeastern Brazil, a farm worker (Regina Case) establishes a casual menage with her elderly husband (Lima Duarte), his dimwitted cousin (Stenio Garcia) and a handsome drifter (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos). The press materials for the film describe it as a “bittersweet comedy,” but it’s no comedy, not even in the Shakespearean sense. And as for bittersweet—well, the truth is it doesn’t have any flavor at all. Case has the worn dignity of the young Anna Magnani, but other characters fail to make an impression. Elena Soarez is credited with the screenplay, but the whole film feels timidly improvised, and director Andrucha Waddington paces it at a numb, leaden crawl. Breno Silveira’s lovely cinematography is the film’s chief virtue.