Lower City

This very engaging first feature from a former assistant to Walter Salles has a very simple, slightly over-familiar story: two young guys (Ramos and Moura), friends since childhood give a ride on their run-down cargo boat to a young stripper and prostitute (Braga), and after she starts giving them freebies, they first fall for her then fall out with each other. What’s most impressive is the way Machado and co-writer Ainouz (who directed Ramos in ‘Madame Sata’) manage to avoid not only moral judgement but dramatic cliché; crucially, we see and believe in all the characters’ passionate feelings for one another, and come to understand and sympathise with their actions, notwithstanding the less than salubrious world (dives, stripjoints, cockfight arenas, boxing rinks, etc) in which they live and work. The performances are terrific, the direction unfussily to the point, and the film even succeeds in finding an ending that’s both satisfying and credible.