Why we recommend it
Jorge Furtado’s must-see feature film entertains by discussing the movie-making process, at the same time as it is a catalog of charismatic characters played by great actors. The film is being re-released by the Sessão Vitrine Petrobrás project.
Review
The greatest virtue of cinema is that it’s contagious. You could say that about any art form, it’s true. But if a person can discover a sudden passion for painting or music, the act of filmmaking stands out for its collective nature. Movies are made in groups. People with different functions and intentions infect each other with the desire for a new movie to exist in this world. Jorge Furtado, like any good director, knows this feeling. So much so that he addressed it in 2007, when he released his fourth feature: Basic Sanitation – The Movie, which returns to theaters in a restoration copy.
The film introduces us to the village of Linha Cristal, in the Serra Gaúcha, whose community faces a problem. Its sewage system needs repair work to restore the town’s stream and rid its residents of the stench that dominates the place. Marina, one of the residents, is committed to the cause and takes the initiative to ask the town hall for the money to build a cesspit, only to discover that there will be no room in the budget for such a project. However, there is cultural funding that could be used to produce a movie. So Marina hatches a plan with her husband, Joaquim, to take the money and use the minimum to produce a low-budget movie, leaving the rest for the works to clean up the Cristal stream. What Marina didn’t anticipate was how much the project of making a movie would begin to enchant her and everyone involved.
Played by Fernanda Torres, who is as good as ever, Marina already indicates that she has a hidden artistic streak during the film’s opening. Her voice-over narration sounds like she’s talking to the spectators in the movie theater, when in fact it’s the beginning of a meeting of the residents. And when she reads aloud her letter to the mayor requesting funding for the project, she begins the text by quoting poetry. Wagner Moura, who plays Joaquim, provides both a counterpoint and a source of moral support for Marina. The interaction between husband and wife, who are total amateurs in the audiovisual field, discovering their own cinematographic language together, is one of the highlights of the story. Like the moment when they get confused about the meaning of the term “fiction”, or when Joaquim has the inspiration to make a movie about a monster that inhabits the cesspit, or his admiration for Marina for writing the script and having the idea of making a subjective camera – despite not having the technical knowledge. “I saw it in a movie. The monster… Like this… with the camera behind the tree, shaking. You know?”
Jorge Furtado’s script features other characters, just as charismatic and funny as Marina and Joaquim, who also end up getting involved and being affected by the production of “O Monstro da Fossa”. Silene (Camila Pitanga), Marina’s sister who agrees to star in the film, gets both acting and the prospect of “stardom” into her head. Their father, Seu Otaviano (Paulo José), remains totally skeptical about the project, but can’t help but show support for his daughters. And when they need him to take part in a scene, he gets more excited than he expected. And Silene’s boyfriend, Fabrício (Bruno Garcia), the typical small-town playboy, who joins the project because he’s the only one with a camera. When they start to fear that the movie won’t work, they turn to someone from outside the village: the editor Zico – Lázaro Ramos, once again working with Furtado after The Man Who Copied and My Uncle Killed a Guy. The whole cast throws themselves into this simple comedy, delving deeper into characters that seem caricatured, but only on the surface. But it’s Fernanda Torres who stands out, with her comedic timing and sincere expressiveness granting Marina a captivating enthusiasm and vulnerability.
Perhaps it is Torres’ recent international success with I’m Still Here that primarily justifies the release of this new restoration. And among the various films in which he has appeared, Basic Sanitation may have the greatest potential for attracting a large audience, both because of the box office at the time of its original release in 2007 , and because it still enjoys popularity and special affection on social networks. But the truth is that Brazilian cinema, like the rest of the world, feeds on its own memory. Revisiting and celebrating its greatest achievements is a way of encouraging its new voices. Cinema may be collective, but it begins to be loved individually, in the gaze of the spectator. After all, Marina went there and made a subjective shot, even without knowing its name.
Where to watch Basic Sanitation, the Movie:
Credits
Writer and Director: Jorge Furtado
Executive Producers: Nora Goulart and Luciana Tomasi
Production Company: Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre
Cast: Fernanda Torres, Wagner Moura, Camila Pitanga, Bruno Garcia, Janaína Kremer, Lázaro Ramos, Tonico Pereira, Paulo José
Director of Photography: Jacob Solitrenick
Art Direction: Fiapo Barth
Costume Design: Rosângela Cortinhas
Sound Recording: Rafael Rodrigues
Music: Leo Henkin
Editing: Giba Assis Brasil
Sound Mixing: José Luiz Sasso
Bruno Weber has a degree in Broadcasting from the Cásper Líbero Foundation and in Audiovisual Production from ETEC Roberto Marinho, and works as a comic artist and film critic. His work can be seen on social media, such as the series ”Unremembered Scenes from Forgotten Films”, autobiographical comic strips and various comics. He also writes film reviews for blogs such as Cinematografia Queer and the Peliplat platform, for which he covered the 48th São Paulo International Film Festival.
