Central Station (1998)
Directed by Walter Salles
An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.
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What critics compared Central Station to
(The only other role of substance goes to none other than Mariela Pera, unforgettable as the prostitute in "Pixote."
It's like a somewhat more palatable, less brilliant version of Victor Babenenco's Pixote (which is also set in Brazil & deals with the country's abandoned youth).
But the whole story is known by her friend Irene ( Marilia Pera , who played the prostitute who adopts the street kid in " Pixote ").
"Central Station" isn't particularly edgy - not like the graphic, landmark portrait of Brazilian street youths, "Pixote" (as perhaps an homage to that 1981 masterpiece, Salles casts Marilia Pe^ra, the prostitute in that film, in the small role as Dora's roommate).
Foreign audiences don’t often get to see this part of the country, which featured in such Brazilian breakouts as “Barren Lives” and “Central Station” but has otherwise been ignored in favor of the country’s more modern metropolises.
In its most commercially successful latterday variant, from Walter Salles’s Central Station through Fernando Meirelles’s City of God to José Padilha’s Elite Squad, that mode has tended to highlight urban deprivation and disadvantaged outsiderhood, and in the latter two cases, spectacular violence, often in a favela setting.
Rather than a truly introspective look at a child searching for a parent like “Central Station” (1998) or “The Kid with a Bike” (2011), Gabriela’s journey is an excuse to get her kidnapped so that Rambo can race across the border.