Just to make it clear: I don't mind slow-paced movies -- I'm a die-hard fan of Antonioni, the early Tsai Ming-Liang and the early Wim Wenders, to name but a few of the great slow-riders. But "O Corpo Ardente" HAS to be one of the most excruciatingly boring films ever made. It's a pseudo-existentialist embarrassment by highly irregular Brazilian filmmaker Walter Hugo Khouri (whose immediately previous film "Noite Vazia" was great). It consists of a HUNDRED close-ups of former French beauty Barbara Laage, here way past her prime and well into her 40s, wearing a ton of make-up on her one and only facial expression: blank!!
She plays Marcia, a rich, married socialite living in São Paulo going through middle-age crisis, throwing boring parties for her "artistic" friends (their conversation about "art" is a jaw-dropping collection of ludicrous pseudo-intellectual boutades; I hope they were meant to be sarcastic), dissatisfied with both her husband and her lover. She decides to spend some time in her country house with her young son, so she can be closer to "nature" and find her "roots" (we know that because she keeps rubbing her feet on the grass) and, once there, she's suddenly attracted to... a wild black horse on the loose! but don't get excited, it's not half as interesting as it sounds.
Always esthetically on his own in Brazilian cinema, Khouri was too kinky to be mainstream, and too attracted to the bourgeoisie to be New Wave (Cinema Novo). It was very much the case of a filmmaker seriously interested in his own navel, as he used his "intellectual"-playboy-womanizer alter ego character "Marcelo" in a least a dozen of his films (played by various actors), surrounded by beautiful women in trendy settings. Although made in 1966, when Brazil was under military regime and going through social/political turmoil, "O Corpo Ardente" is totally alienated from Brazilian reality -- it could have been made in Switzerland. The only fine thing about it must have been master DP Rudolf Icsey's b&w cinematography, but we'll never know: the DVD copy is AWFUL (it looks like a VERY bad VHS tape recorded as DVD).
Don't waste your time, this goes nowhere. On the other hand, if you're an insomniac, this might be your medicine. My vote: 2 out of 10 couldn't give it the 1 it deserves because of the brief presence of the gorgeous and talented Dina Sfat in a minor, wasted part.
She plays Marcia, a rich, married socialite living in São Paulo going through middle-age crisis, throwing boring parties for her "artistic" friends (their conversation about "art" is a jaw-dropping collection of ludicrous pseudo-intellectual boutades; I hope they were meant to be sarcastic), dissatisfied with both her husband and her lover. She decides to spend some time in her country house with her young son, so she can be closer to "nature" and find her "roots" (we know that because she keeps rubbing her feet on the grass) and, once there, she's suddenly attracted to... a wild black horse on the loose! but don't get excited, it's not half as interesting as it sounds.
Always esthetically on his own in Brazilian cinema, Khouri was too kinky to be mainstream, and too attracted to the bourgeoisie to be New Wave (Cinema Novo). It was very much the case of a filmmaker seriously interested in his own navel, as he used his "intellectual"-playboy-womanizer alter ego character "Marcelo" in a least a dozen of his films (played by various actors), surrounded by beautiful women in trendy settings. Although made in 1966, when Brazil was under military regime and going through social/political turmoil, "O Corpo Ardente" is totally alienated from Brazilian reality -- it could have been made in Switzerland. The only fine thing about it must have been master DP Rudolf Icsey's b&w cinematography, but we'll never know: the DVD copy is AWFUL (it looks like a VERY bad VHS tape recorded as DVD).
Don't waste your time, this goes nowhere. On the other hand, if you're an insomniac, this might be your medicine. My vote: 2 out of 10 couldn't give it the 1 it deserves because of the brief presence of the gorgeous and talented Dina Sfat in a minor, wasted part.