jazon-santos Review of Lower City

Lower City (2005)

Keep Your Eyes Open to the Cultural Issues Underlying the Plot

[10/10 · 2 July 2006]

"Cidade Baixa" is a very deep movie, depth of which you can only see if you are willing to go beyond its surface of "strong sexual content" (by American standards, at least). In a nutshell, the film is "very real" without being hyper-realistic. It is like everything is "really" happening and a camera simply happened to capture the facts. It shows how life can simply take you to places/circumstances and you just gotta live with that, because you were placed in this world somewhere where there aren't many opportunities for you to do something about those issues. In that respect, we have poverty on the surface, where the characters live such a "sublife" that they do all kinds of things to survive – e.g., prostitution and crimes. Underlying, we have cultural issues, which are just like nature when they are very encrusted in the life of each individual constituting society. In the case at hand, we have two men who love each other deeply and don't even perceive that what they want is really each other -- rather than a woman. And that is because they have learned that in a macho society, two men should love each other just as brothers or the like. Somewhat contradictorily, many women in Brazilian Northeastern society – if not in Brazil as a whole – have learned to live with male homosexuality in a very interesting way, often making themselves blind to what is going on around them, involving their husbands and other guys. So here we have a woman, Karinna, willing to live a real threesome relationship, without having to verbalize it in that way. She sees the love Naldinho and Deco have for each other as something higher and she wants to live that with them, no matter what. She just can't really make her mind up as to which one she wants, because she wants both, she wants them together, because the beautiful thing she sees in them is their being together and she wants "a piece of it." However, that becomes hard to achieve, given that we are dealing with two macho men, who are not even aware that they want each other. And don't get me wrong: these guys want women real bad – however, they want each other as well. They may not know that on a conscious level, but they sexually yearn for each other. The reckless life the three of them live is just the iceberg tip of their longings – they can't face them, so they live an apparently senseless life. There we have the "strong sexual content" back in discussion: now, given the context laid out above, the sexual content gains much more sense. The most significant sexual scene being when Deco and Karinna have sex next to Naldinho while he's supposedly asleep, and Deco has just caressed Naldinho's chest, in a way that sure makes one think he desires him. It's like: the woman is conveniently placed in the scene in order for Deco to be able to materialize his sexual desire, right there when he felt it, next to Naldinho. Now, believe me, I truly think two men can be friends without any (unconscious/suppressed) sexual interest for each other. However, if you watch the movie really carefully, you can find many other signs hinting at that. In summary, the film is about showing how things simply happen sometimes and how people react to those things, just being taken with the flow of life, sometimes not even being aware of how they are victims of the circumstances in life and in society.