Foreign Land (1995)

Good plot, excellent direction and great songs....

Sometimes, movies that are not overly well-known and that you happen to watch just by chance give you a good surprise. "Foreign land" (= "Terra estrangeira"), a Brazilian film in black and white directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, is one of those movies.

The plot is simple: Paco (Fernando Alves Pinto), a young Brazilian man that dreams of becoming an actor, wants to travel to Spain. He has no money, so he ends up smuggling goods for Igor (Luis Melo) in order to pay his ticket to Spain. Strangely enough, Paco will end up in Portugal, where he will meet another Brazilian, an attractive and very troubled woman named Alex (Fernanda Torres). Both are in a foreign land, Portugal, and that is true not only literally (they are in a different country), but metaphorically as well, as they cannot help but feel like outsiders. Unfortunately for Paco, Alex has plans of her own that will put them in danger.

What happens, and why? Well, you will have to watch "Foreign land" :) Suffice it to say that I really like it, and that I was quite impressed by how well it is filmed, and by the almost haunting beauty of some of its scenes. Of course, I also loved the beautiful songs in Portuguese included in the movie, and I think you are likely to like them too. All in all, highly recommended!

Belen Alcat April 14, 2006

A great film!

A great film! It really shows the real Brazil. The direction and cinematography was absolutely gorgeous. The story was very moving. I give it four stars. August 11, 2005

3.5 stars, if possible...

I was so wowed by director Walter Salles's work in "The Motorcycle Diaries" (which I watched the night before) that I just had to rush out and rent his earlier work. This was okay, but disappointing -- juvenelia from the future director of "Central Station" and the Che film. It's sort of a caper film: a young Brazilian man, set adrift in the economic chaos of the initial post-dictatorial years of the early 1990s, half-unwittingly takes a job as a "mule" for a diamond smuggler, flying to Lisbon to deliver the package and naturally gets into a world of trouble. The film's most interesting aspects are the presentation of Brazil's political instability and the ironies of a post-colonial Portugal overrun by refugees from Angola and Brazil... The film itself is pretty art-schoolish, shot on super-saturated black-and-white, poorly paced and with a fairly unoriginal plotline. It was okay, but nowhere near as well-crafted as his later work. Interesting, though, to note how fond Salles is of having his characters go on long journeys, over vast streches of the earth... It's his motif, I suppose! February 20, 2005

The Magic of Cinema Recreated!

FOREIGN LAND / Brazil-Portugal 1995
13 December 2003 The best part of this film is how much it surprises. It's a B&W film from Brazil and deflates expectation as it starts out almost like a student film - slow, awkward and seemingly uninteresting, with so much of gritty grain that it is initially annoying. Yet the change of pace and the transition into a gripping tale of innocence, love and adventure is so seamless, that only in the end do we realize what sheer cinematic delight we have been privy to.
* Mise-en-scene: Even though it was made in 1995, this film belongs to the highest traditions of 50s Film Noir. Though reminiscent of Welles' Touch of Evil in its narrative style, you've probably never seen a grittier tale, and feel for the characters and their innocence as the plot thickens and the feeling of foreboding grips you.
* The fact that the lead pair comprises unknown faces works for the film, and makes it believable. After all, the feeling of alienation and desperation is easier to ascribe to, to a nobody who has no-where to go.
* Foreign Land communicates a deep underlying political message to Brazilians who were migrating to Europe in the 1980s and the film does a successful job of portraying life outside of Brazil as mean-spirited and dangerous.
* The character development of the boy from struggling artist to bold young man is thoroughly convincing as is the unlikely romance between two desperate people in a strange land. I particularly enjoyed the change in pace of the narrative where it midway meanders off the beaten track and becomes a road-film.
* Cinematography: In the final analysis, the low-brow high chiaroscuro grainy photography works for the film and successfully builds a dark mood that establishes the feeling of evil lurking just around the corner in a foreign land.
* Sound design is effective in creating a nostalgic mood which begs us to ask the protagonists what on earth they are doing in a foreign land when they could have been safely tucked away in beloved Brazil.
I highly recommend this film to any lover of international cinema and particularly to those who feel inspired by gritty, small-time, content driven films with a powerful vision, that dare to challenge the goliaths of our filmmaking factories. January 2, 2004

A work of art

"Foreign land" is a film that has made my mind in my late teenage years. The story is alright, but it impresses for the image and sound composition. First, the photography of Walter Carvalho, black&white, Bresson-style. Then, the music, "vapor barato", an anthem of the seventies in Brazil (and the song was not in the film, it became part of it when the director asked Torres - the character Alex - which song she considered important in her life. She was hearing Vapor Barato in her walkman). It's a moody film, and tells much more about the life of the characters (foreigners/expatried), who search for something beyond, than about politics. It's about people, not countries. July 15, 2003

More reviews at Amazon.com ...