I have a general rule of thumb about movies from Africa- I will see anything that comes there. Sometimes I love what I see, I often feel ambiguous, but rarely do I hate. That's what you get when you watch movies based on geography. I just feel though, that I know so little about certain places in the world, I mean I can't even visualize what the majority of the non-Western world looks like, and films help fill that gap. This particular movie falls into the ambiguous category, a film with beautiful moments, whose parts don't add up to a cohesive whole. Humanism runs throughout however, and that seems to be a theme in African movies, and is something I love.
This particular movie revolves around two main characters: a soldier, no, a sergeant, as he fervently reminds us, named Manu, who lost a leg in the 26-year civil war. In addition to lacking a leg, he's out of a job and a home. He's desperate for a prosthetic leg, but remains proud throughout the whole demeaning process of pulling his life back together. There is also an adolescent boy (can't remember his name) who lives with his stern but loving grandmother, and dreams of the day his father will return home. He gets into trouble by stealing and getting into fights, but we know deep down he's a good kid. There is an assortment of stereotyped characters, the upper-crust beautiful woman who teaches the poor, the hooker with the heart of gold, dirty politicians, another upper-crust beautiful person, this time an asshole who profits off of his familial ties to find a secure job in the government, and so on. The plot starts to get complicated when Manu wakes up one morning on the street to find his leg stolen.
Unfortunately, the film falls into the trap of cliché and overwrought melodrama. There are, however, some scenes that stand out. The moon in the sky falling into the earth in the form of a basketball thus providing a nice segue into the next scene, or when the boy lifts the prosthetic leg he has stolen into the night sky so that it can point to where his father might be. Or when the teacher and Manu fall asleep outside of the hospital and she wakes up to find herself resting on his shoulder. The tender look between the two speaks a thousand words. The all-to-clean ending however, feels tacked on and certain societal issues could have been examined more deeply, but like I said, it's refreshing to see anything from Africa, particularly how everyday people live, eat, drink, hate, and love. And I can ALWAYS listen to Portuguese.
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