Orfeu

In veteran Diegues' colourful update of the Greek myth - not to mention Marcel Camus' 1959 classic Orfeu Negro, also set during the Rio carnival - Orfeu is a top samba composer and Euridice a beautiful if innocent hick from the sticks, who tempts the womanising songster away from the adoring and voluptuous Mira and from Death (a drug-dealing gang). Nothing very original in any of that, especially if you've seen Camus' film, but the carnival scenes are spectacular, the music is mostly lovely (though one wishes the characters would actually burst into song and dance more often), and the performances charming. When compared, however, to Luhrmann's Romeo & Juliet, which Diegues has surely been watching, it looks a little staid and obvious.