Michele Massa's blog

Overworked Parisienne Chloe takes commit of her flat in the direction of an overdue vacation, only to stumble upon upon her return that her cat, Gris-Gris, has taken a vacation of his own and can’t be found. Her search leads her on a voyage fully her shabby, bohemian neighborhood, which is haunted by the yoke specters of gentrification and societal go off. Atmospheric, funky, and full of improvisational spirit.

Not since Buñuel’s Los Olvidados has the plight of kids in Third World urban poverty been so acutely affecting; and not since Truffaut’s 400 Blows has a child actor (da Silva) so etched his deplorable delinquency on the celebration of mean-class audiences. Even allowing for the institutional horrors depicted in Scum, nothing in recent cinema comes close to the devastating account of brutalisation and exploitation offered in Babenco’s murkiness about a 10-year-ex- boy who somehow survives the perverted oppression of the reform drill, to escape and command his way into dope-dealing, prostitution and regicide in the Brazilian underworld. Originally labelled a ‘denunciation’ film in Brazil on account of its critique of a social system that fails to anticipate the majority of the country’s three million unsettled kids from turning to crime, Pixote arrived here laden with art cinema awards for its exposé of a problem which, for all its cultural remoteness, carves into your honour with the sudden thrust of a flick knife in a circle fight.