"I Hate Sao Paulo"

posted to www.marxmail.org on April 29, 2004

"I Hate Sao Paulo" is a semi-autobiographical film by Brazilian director Dardo Toledo Barros, who now resides in NYC. It is an ironic play on the slogan of his new home, "I love New York".

The main character Daniel is a millionaire financial speculator who is seen taking a helicopter to work in the opening scenes of the film. That day he will gamble everything on a deal based on insider information provided by a fellow broker, who ends up cheating him on the other side of a complex currency transaction.

When the bankrupt Daniel informs his emasculating wife that she will have to postpone her vacation to Vail, she throws him out of the house. Staying at a modest apartment provided by an old friend, he goes out on one unfruitful job interview after another in the midst of a financial meltdown. The men interviewing him are uniformly cynical. One informs him that it requires dishonesty to get ahead in business, while another terminates the interview during an online search on Daniel while he is sitting in a chair opposite him. The clear implication is that he has been put on a blacklist by his former employer.

As he wanders the streets of Sao Paulo, a city that is simultaneously ultramodern and bereft of Brazilian charm, he appears to be at the end of his tether and finally begins to contemplate suicide. He is the quintessential victim of a meltdown in world financial markets. In counterpoint to the despondent Daniel, there are a series of "talking heads" that appear on-screen throughout the film in the fashion of Henry Miller et al in Warren Beatty's "Reds". These are elderly immigrants from Italy, Lebanon and elsewhere who effusively profess their love for Sao Paulo and the good fortune it has brought them.

While passing a travel bureau one day, Daniel spots a poster of an idyllic looking island in the window. Immediately, this island becomes a symbol of an escape from the loneliness and alienation he has been suffering in Sao Paulo, even when he was at the top of the economic heap. As is so often the case in fictional works, a coincidence provides deliverance and self-realization to the main character. Daniel discovers that the manager of the travel bureau is an old friend of his late father, whom he has always assumed died of heart attack.

From this man, he learns that his father was a partisan of the Communist Party who died in jail during the brutal dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. His crime was not organizing the armed struggle or any other militant activity. Instead, he was punished for making a film documentary on the experience of immigrants to Sao Paulo, whose footage has been seen throughout the film. The dictatorship, in a paranoid gesture that competes with Pinochet's Chile, had him killed because the film might be seen as anti-dictatorship propaganda overseas.

He decides to complete the film with the assistance of his father's old friend. This not only connects him with his father's past but a part of Brazilian society that is completely at odds with the coldhearted ruthlessness of the financial sector.

I saw "I Hate Sao Paulo" at the Pioneer Theater on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where it might return for a two-week run. Check with their website at: http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/ or the film's website at: http://www.ihatesaopaulo.com for scheduling and other information.