Brazilian Film Festival
Annual Brazilian Film Festival Day 2 : COFFEE WITH CINNAMON
September 15, 2019The Brazilian Film Festival continued yesterday (14/09/2019) with the screening of the award-winning Coffee with Cinnamon, produced by Ary Rosa and Glenda Nicácio. I was late by 41 minutes, but it seems to me that I hardly missed anything important. We were also bridled with some technical hitches here and there, but nothing that we couldn't decide to simply overlook for the sake of enjoying this gem of Brazilian cinema.
Coffee with Cinnamon is a film that highlights the realness in loss and how different people handle the loss of loved ones, and how difficult it may seem to move on from the tragedy. It also encapsulates the possibility of hope, even where there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Margarida isolates herself in the town of Sao Felix, her home, after the loss of her child. She is merely existing and not living, hiding behind the shadow of cowardice as well as a desperate will to cling to the past. Her husband, Paulo, leaves her eventually, unable to take any more of her bouts of sadness.
In the same Bahian town lives Violeta, her husband, Marcos, and her children. Violeta, cumbered with a load of taking care of her sick grandmother, Roquelina, chooses to see life in a positive light, waking up every day and making coxinhas and merry with a wide an amazingly encouraging range of optimism.
WHAT I LOVED
The directors of this film were successful in the true depiction of just how much Margardia had decided to give up on the adventure called life, with scenes showing tangled weeds closing up on her in her home, blood running from the top to the bottom of her walls, her much questionable and as Violeta called it ungodly state of not keeping herself clean, with voices heard once saying: She died together with the boy
Violeta feels like she owes this woman who reminded her once that life should not be given up on, and decides that she will now take it upon herself to unearth this woman from her sad state, and thanks to a cup of well-made coffee with cinnamon, repetition of a mantra on how one keeps on breathing even after the tragedy, and a rose a day, Margarida is able to upon herself up to Violeta, and even does what I was annoyed by the whole time watching the film - picked up the courage to go into her dead son's room and packed up the last of his things!
The highlight of the film for me was the realness with which Margarida described how she feels about the cinema. It was a sign as to the impending gradual moving-on process that was commencing:
A good film is one that shows the weaknesses, the limitations and the anguishes that everyone has. A good movie wants to try you and be tried, and when that happens you lose your ground, lose your shame, lose the line and transcend.
It’s in the dark and in front of the image and dominated by the sound that you can finally confront yourself and listen to that which you never had the courage to say to yourself. And at that moment you find yourself. You find yourself and lose yourself all at once, without a mask or a disguise and even if it is just for a few minutes. When the film ends and the lights go on, everything is different, empty. That person that sat in that seat will never get up. That person who gets up is new, different.
P.S. Valdineia Soriano's performance as Margarida was at its epitome and the entire cast outdid itself.
The Brazilian Film Festival continues on the 26th of this month:
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