A Via Láctea (The Milky Way)

This movie by Lina Chamie is a little bit annoying that’s it if you guessed the end almost at the beginning, like I did. But has quite a good cinematography especially with the outside of Sao Paulo beautiful field landscapes.

Tells about Heitor and Julia that over the phone have a quarrel and Heitor leaving his house taking his car to go across Sao Paulo to get to her house and make up. While driving in traffic packed Sao Paulo he recalls when he met Julia and her life, but does it from his point-of-view and again from her point-of-view.

It is supposed to be a story of love, jealousy, insecurities and similar in a chaotic urban setting; but actually is about… oops! I cannot tell you because I’ll spoil the movie for you all! But if you are a true movie lover unfortunately you will also guess the end too soon (the director gave too many clues too early) and you will know what this movie is really all about since the very beginning.

Perhaps by now you know that guessing the story early spoiled the movie for me, a movie that perhaps if the story was not so important I could have enjoyed a lot more. Nevertheless I found this movie somehow pretentious and the handheld camera takes average and annoying.

The movie was screened at the 46th International Critics’ Week at 2007 Cannes and has some award in international festivals. There is something that is worth mentioning the movie had a very low budget, about US$200,000 and the movie production values for such a low budget are truly excellent. Still, I felt like I was watching production values used in advertising, which by the way in Brazil they are the best of the region.

Obviously is not a movie for all audiences as tells the story out of sequence, almost all the movie ‘moves’ as has many handheld camera takes, tries hard to be very arty and dialogues are very intellectual (which is not bad, au contraire, is good) as Heitor was a writer.

Some viewers find the film belonging to the experimental genre, I do not particularly agree, but I mention as a reference because if you enjoy experimental cinema perhaps you should give this movie a try.

No, I did not enjoy this movie and I cannot recommend it.