Sound of Brazil

The lugubrious Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki is not an obvious choice to make a documentary about Brazilian music. He deliberately avoids the usual suspects - Astrid Gilberto, the bossa nova - concentrating instead on musicians, singers and dancers he met on his travels, most of them unknown outside their own communities. In his gruff, deadpan way, he offers an authoritative enough survey of all the different influences - Portuguese, African, Indian - behind the country's music and he unearths some spectacularly gifted performers. But the documentary is very slackly structured and his narrational style is glum and monotone.