central station ( central do brazil ) ( brazil-france , 1998 ) * * * 1/2 directed by walter salles , jr . written by joao emanuel carneiro and marcos bernstein , based on an idea by salles . photography , walter carvalho . editing , isabelle rathery , felipe lacerda . poduction design , cassio amarante , carla caffe . music , antonio pinto , jaques morelembaum . producers , arthur cohn , martine de clermont-tonnerre . cast : fernanda montenegro ( dora ) , vinicius de oliveira ( josue ) , mariela pera ( irene ) , othon bastos ( cesar the truck driver ) , et al . a sony classics release . in portuguese , subtitled . 110 min . r ( language ) mix the following ingredients : brazil's own 1960's cinema novo's first wave ( political , socially conscious , realistic ) ; the road movies genre ; early italian neorealist films ; cinema-verite ; and bits of epistolary films . take as your subject the undying category in which a tough ( or just gruff ) man or woman gets somehow stuck with a kid ( generally but not always sweet like shirley temple or freddie bartholomew ) that will mellow the adult ; think of the current remake of cassavetes' " gloria . " and what do you get in central station ? a hybrid ? not at all . you get an original , un-gimmicky , un-icky , un-cliched , attention-holding , touching film that opens your eyes on major aspects of the human condition in brazil and on that country's people and life . obviously , the movie has been appreciated , with awards and/or applause at several festivals , including the top prize at the berlin festival . it is also a contender in the best foreign film category at the 1999 oscars . rio de janeiro's central train station where 300 , 000 people move about each day , is a microcosm of urban society . the station looks to me ( but i may be wrong ) like the hub of local trains rather than long-distance travel . also , the majority of the people we see are working class , low income or no income cariocas , cheaply clad -- a far cry from the well-dressed crowds in north american commuter trains . ( to anticipate comments , i do know that , as i write this in cold february , it is 90 degrees in rio , and people are in shirt-sleeves , but shabbiness prevails at the station by any standards ) . the mobs are busy rushing into the trains . many younger men jump into the wagons through open windows . the place is also a hive of makeshift stores and stands . early into the movie there's a horrendous scene . a man who has lifted something from a shop is pursued . two cops catch up with him . they take his loot , and , without thinking twice about it , one of the lawmen puts a bullet in the fellow's head . nothing is made of this . life is cheap . dora , in her mid-to-late 60s , and no beauty --to put it mildly--is a retired elementary school teacher . to make ends meet , in the cavernous station she has a table on which she writes letters that many illiterates dictate to her and gets also paid for putting on stamps later and mailing the envelopes . but , tough , brusque and caustic , the scribe is also a scam artist . when she gets to her dismal apartment by the tracks , she brings along her daily bag of letters that she's supposed to mail , and shows them to her friend irene . irene may be her roommate or her neighbor , it's not clear . clearly though , she is the only friend in dora's depressing life . irene , younger , jolly and a still nice-looking fading beauty , is probably a prostitute , though this is not elaborated . at home , dora perhaps selects a few envelops that she mails . for sure , she tears up many of them and puts the rest in drawers , where they probably remain forever . among her customers is a woman with her 9-year old boy josue . her husband , a drunkard , left her long ago . she want him back , for herself and for their fatherless child . that woman is killed by a bus right outside the station . the plight of the child is even more tragic if you are aware of the horrendous problem of millions of street-children in brazil . their survival is a tragedy ; many even get killed by the police for no reason . soon , hard-as-nails dora takes streetwise and sullen josue to her place . her unexpected kindness is undone when she sells the boy to a shabby " agency " which supposedly supplies children to adoptive parents abroad . dora returns home with a new color tv set , on which , with subtle , symbolic , irony , we see only black-and-white programs . but an aghast irene tells her that the agency is a fake , that the kids will be killed for their organs . dora rushes back , kidnaps josue and in fear of retaliation , flees with him to look for the missing father . this is where the travels begin . it's more of a road movie than an odyssey since the " adventures " are on a small , intimate rather than a grand scale . the grand scale is only in the vastness of brazil , the world's fifth largest nation . the woman and the rebellious josue take a lot of busses . when hardly solvent or broke they hitch rides in trucks . most of this is in the " sertao " of the north east , brazil's thinly populated , often barren outback . ( it's a neat reversal of the poor of those areas trudging to the promised land of big cities ) . the trip , the landscape , the places seen are harsh . nothing is paved in this barrenness , except for the main highways . the viewers are given a tour which , like the entire film , is extremely well photographed and uncompromisnly realistic . we are light years away from the commonly pictured touristic brazil with its fiestas and the thong-wearing beauties of the copcabana beach . credit director salles's experience as a documentarist . he is objective but has a heart . while the protagonists gradually , as expected , draw closer to each other , salles , with much naturalness , avoids sentimentalizing people or places . yet his eyes and ears are full of quiet sympathy for what , to use bunuel's title , are los olvidados , the forgotten ones who struggle to subsist . the people whom the woman and the child come across , by and large are decent folks who live in squalor . an episode with a nice , warm , older trucker , an evangelical who , for a brief spell , stirs the woman in dora , is effortlessly touching . and in a long , spectacular sequence , dora and josue find themselves in a throng of pilgrims that go to revere jesus in acts of hope and of self-consolation . ( one should not , by the way , make too much of names such as josue ( joshua ) and jesus , the elusive father , nor the fact that jesus is a sort of carpenter . symbolism may be present , but with a light touch . curiously , in the other main candidate for best foreign film oscar this year ( life is beautiful ) the woman is called dora and the child is josue the humanity of the dora-josue twosome has enormous appeal . she is one of brazil's top stage actresses -- and light years away from the looks of sharon stone in gloria ! ) he was a poor shoeshine boy whom the director discovered in an airport . their performances are so real that the word " acting " never comes into your mind . what might come to mind is the great italian film " stolen children , " as well as its contrast with central station , whose poverty makes even the italian south look relatively wealthy . the most upsetting sight for me , one that encapsulates the movie , is the the picture of a goat in a sertao village . the animal , trying to graze in the barren dust , walks somehow with his two broken front legs . yet the total movie does not stress grimness . it has its natural quota of positiveness , even unforced humor . " le mauvais gout mene au crime " ( stendhal ) edwin jahiel's movie reviews are at <a href= " http : //www . prairienet . org/ejahiel " >http : //www . prairienet . org/ejahiel</a> 
