Foreign Land
by Daniela Thomas, Walter Salles
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Alberto Alexandre, Alexandre Borges, Canto e Castro, Fernando Alves Pinto, Laura CardosoDirector: Daniela Thomas, Walter Salles
Writer: Daniela Thomas
Writer: Walter Salles
Producer: Afonso Coaracy
Producer: António da Cunha Telles
Writer: Marcos Bernstein
Writer: Millor Fernandes
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-11-07
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
Movie Reviews of Foreign Land
Movie Review: The Magic of Cinema Recreated!
Summary: 5 Stars
FOREIGN LAND / Brazil-Portugal 199513 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.
Summary of Foreign Land
A Film by Walter Salles and Daniela ThomasTired of living in squalor, an aspiring Brazilian actor accepts a "delivery job" from a shady antique dealer and travels to Lisbon carrying a violin filled with uncut diamonds. When the exchange goes bad, he finds himself on the run from an underworld thug and in the arms of a beautiful woman caught up in a Portuguese black-market.
A simple but superb little thriller. Aspiring actor Paco (Fernando Alves Pinto) lives in a poor area of São Paolo, Brazil, with his mother, who yearns to go back to her native Spain. When she dies abruptly, Paco finds himself without direction and falls in with a man named Igor, who asks him to carry an antique violin to Lisbon. There he finds himself caught up in a black-market scam, from which his only hope of escape is a woman named Alex (Fernanda Torres)--only Alex has an agenda of her own. Foreign Land resembles a lean, low-budget film noir like Detour or The Asphalt Jungle, only filmed with the spare yet beautiful visual aesthetic of a director like Antonioni. The gritty black and white images are astoundingly gorgeous, yet visual style never gets in the way of an engrossing, emotionally compelling crime story. As Paco and Alex drive to the border of Spain, hoping to escape the dangerous mess their lives have become, Foreign Land becomes downright heartbreaking. Sexy, suspenseful, poetic, and shot through with dark, ironic humor--basically, this is the movie just about every American director wants to make but doesn't know how. A knockout. --Bret Fetzer
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