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Azougue Nazaré

Country: Brazil, Language: Portuguese, 80 mins

Trans | Drama | 2018

Director: Tiago Melo
Writer: Tiago Melo; Jeronimo Lemos
Producer: Leonardo Sette

CGiii Comment

There's nothing worse than having to sit through a bible-bashing...especially when that said bible-bashing is delivered by an 'actor' who couldn't act even if it were the difference between life and death.

That's the problem with casting a non-professional cast...the weak links will cause the project to coming crashing down all around the good intentions. Tiago Melo did strike lucky with Valmir do Côco...but, despite a worthy [and credible] performance...he, alone, cannot save this film.

Think of Azougue Nazaré as an unfinished tapestry...because, this filmmaker either ran out of money and/or ideas and/or time...there are so many unresolved subplots as well as quite a few subplots that weren't needed in the first place, serving no purpose whatsoever - what was with all the 'spooky' stuff?!? Totally redundant.

Despite the strong beginning and ending, the intervening minutes were a messy string of underdeveloped storylines. Filmmaking is about storytelling, when the storyteller loses focus, the audience loses interest...and - rather quickly - they start to disappear.

Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

In a vast, seemingly endless cane field, the sugarcane dances to the wind, like sea waves. PAI NANI, an Afro-Brazilian spiritual leader, carries out a religious act with five caboclos de lança - costumed dancers of the "maracatu rural". As the caboclos acquire supernatural powers, they embody entities and disappear. The city of Nazaré da Mata witnesses mysterious events. The population is startled with the ravaging supernatural phenomena. In an isolated house blended with the cane field lives the couple CATITA and Sister DARLENE. Catita plays parts on the local maracatu, but hides it from his wife. Darlene is an avid follower of Pastor BARACHINHA, a former maracatu master who turned himself to the evangelical religion and now is on a mission to cast the devil out of the maracatu and evangelize the whole city. Sister Darlene discovers that Catita is involved with maracatu and compels him to meet the Pastor and convert to Evangelicalism.