Midnight
Meia noite
dir. Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas
Brazil / France, 1998 - 64
"In Brazil, successive generations of people have become used to hearing at school that their country will be the country of the future. Strangely enough, the arrival of the third millennium confronts us with this Promised Land which in fact isn't one." - Walter Salles
Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas have created a haunting, romantic and exhilarating film, which speaks to our increasing isolation as human beings with a fierce clarity and rich intensity. "Midnight" marks the second co-operative venture between the two filmmakers.
A young man who refuses to spend the millennium in jail will have to kill his best friend to regain his freedom. A young woman who is suddenly deserted by the man she loves wants to commit suicide. These two people find each other on the roof of a building that looks out over the Copacabana, the beach of Rio de Janeiro. Both refuse to give in to their present situation. On the last night of the millennium they will have to find a new life.
Midnight uses the breathtaking beauty and terrible poverty of Rio as an apt set for a dynamic and romantic love story. At the same time, the film is about the growing gap between rich and poor, North and South.
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