Review: "I Hate Sao Paulo" (2004)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

"I Hate Sao Paulo" is a semi-autobiographical film by Brazilian director
Dardo Toledo Barros, who now resides in NYC. It is an ironic play on the
slogan of his new home, "I love New York".

The main character Daniel is a millionaire financial speculator who is
seen taking a helicopter to work in the opening scenes of the film. That
day he will gamble everything on a deal based on insider information
provided by a fellow broker, who ends up cheating him on the other side
of a complex currency transaction.

When the bankrupt Daniel informs his emasculating wife that she will
have to postpone her vacation to Vail, she throws him out of the house.
Staying at a modest apartment provided by an old friend, he goes out on
one unfruitful job interview after anotheris in the midst of a financial
meltdown. The men interviewing him are uniformly cynical. One informs
him that it requires dishonesty to get ahead in business, while another
terminates the interview during an online search on Daniel while he is
sitting in a chair opposite him. The clear implication is that he has
been put on a blacklist by his former employer.

As he wanders the streets of Sao Paulo, a city that is simultaneously
ultramodern and bereft of Brazilian charm, he appears to be at the end
of his tether and finally begins to contemplate suicide. He is the
quintessential victim of a meltdown in world financial markets. In
counterpoint to the despondent Daniel, there are a series of "talking
heads" that appear on-screen throughout the film in the fashion of Henry
Miller et al in Warren Beatty's "Reds". These are elderly immigrants
from Italy, Lebanon and elsewhere who effusively profess their love for
Sao Paulo and the good fortune it has brought them.

While passing a travel bureau one day, Daniel spots a poster of an
idyllic looking island in the window. Immediately, this island becomes a
symbol of an escape from the loneliness and alienation he has been
suffering in Sao Paulo, even when he was at the top of the economic
heap. As is so often the case in fictional works, a coincidence provides
 deliverance and self-realization to the main character. Daniel
discovers that the manager of the travel bureau is an old friend of his
late father, whom he has always assumed died of heart attack.

From this man, he learns that his father was a partisan of the
Communist Party who died in jail during the brutal dictatorship that
ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. His crime was not organizing the armed
struggle or any other militant activity. Instead, he was punished for
making a film documentary on the experience of immigrants to Sao Paulo,
whose footage has been seen throughout the film. The dictatorship, in a
paranoid gesture that competes with Pinochet's Chile, had him killed
because the film might be seen as anti-dictatorship propaganda overseas.

He decides to complete the film with the assistance of his father's old
friend. This not only connects him with his father's past but a part of
Brazilian society that is completely at odds with the coldhearted
ruthlessness of the financial sector.

I saw "I Hate Sao Paulo" at the Pioneer Theater on Manhattan's Lower
East Side, where it might return for a two-week run. Check with their
website at: http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/ or the film's website at:
http://www.ihatesaopaulo.com for scheduling and other information.

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