Almost Brothers

Middle-class white boy Jorge meets poor black Miguel when his musicologist dad takes him to the favelas to see Miguel’s samba-composer father. Half a century later, they still know each other but the former’s a politician and the latter a crime lord protecting his turf from inside prison. Most of the movie, in fact, is set inside the prison, because Jorge too spent years there, as a political proisoner… Reflecting on the racial, economic, ideological and other divisions during 50 years of political upheaval, the film is certainly well-meaning and ambitious in its attempts to deal with important issues (including the famously awful conditions of Brazil’s prisons), but it’s also less than lucid, convincing or cogerent. The schematism doesn’t help of course, though you’d think it would at least have prevented the film from becoming as thematically untidy as it is. The music by Nana Vasconcelos is good, though.