In Brazilian director Jorge Furtado’s
2002 film “Houve Uma Vez Dois Verões,”
the character Roza repeats the phrase
“I’m pregnant” three times. Each declaration
marks a distinct chapter in
the movie, which is divided into equal
parts with almost mathematical precision.
Professing one’s pregnancy has
become cliché in cinema, and Furtado is
the first to admit that his films are full
of stereotypical characters. However, it’s
the inversion and manipulation of these
stereotypes that has garnered Furtado
respect in the film world.
“I trace my influences to the director
Billy Wilder,” Furtado told the audience
after screening one of his films in
person at the Harvard Film Archive last
weekend. “I read all about him, and then
realized he had been inspired by director
Ernst Lubitsch. I traced these influences
all the way back to Shakespeare, who also
mixed genres—drama and romance,
comedy and tragedy. They weren’t separate
things for him.”
Furtado pays homage to the dramatist
in his films. In “Houve,” there is
a scene in which one of the characters,
Juca, wears a shirt with a quote from
Shakespeare in English. However, Juca
does not completely understand what
it says and mistranslates the meaning
to a girl he is trying to impress. Playful
touches such as this are a hallmark of
Furtado’s films.
“Houve” follows two teenage boys,
Chico and Juca, over the course of two
summers at the beach near Porto Alegre,
Brazil. Furtado was inspired to write the
script for his son, actor Pedro Furtado
(who plays the character of Juca) and Pedro’s
fellow classmates in drama school.
“For class projects, Pedro and his
friends would do renditions of Woody
Allen films and other scripts with adult
characters,” he said. “It was so strange to
see young people playing mature characters.
I realized that there really weren’t
that many interesting films for young
people, so I wrote this one.”
Furtado also filmed the movie entirely
with a hand-held digital camera.
This touch was not only an artistic experiment
for the director but a method
often used by film students, which was
part of Furtado’s purpose.
“We would film in a restaurant and
people wouldn’t even know we were
filming a movie, so the scene is just so
natural,” he said. “The shot in the café
with all the people walking by is one of
the most beautiful scenes I have ever
filmed, and I didn’t even know it was going
to be so beautiful until later because
of the nature of the digital camera I was
using.”
The technique lends itself well to the
linear structure of the narrative, told
from the perspective of Chico. Furtado
cites the tradition of American literature—
from Mark Twain to Kurt Vonnegut—
as his inspiration for telling his
narratives from the perspective of young
males.
All of the actors in the film are university
students, with the exception of
Chico’s love interest Roza, who is played
by Ana Maria Mainieri, a professional
model who had never acted before.
Furtado is known for having manipulative
and calculating women in his movies,
and Roza, a character who tells men
she is pregnant in order to extort money
from them, is no exception.
“As a director, I feel like there is a
limit to how much I can truly influence
an actor’s work,” Furtado said. “Maineiri
was able to really show the dual aspects
of her character, both her manipulative
and human sides.”
The last time Roza says she is pregnant,
it’s actually true. Furtado’s inspiration
for the story was a scandal that happened
in Brazil a few years ago, in which
it was revealed that a drug company sold
birth control pills made out of flour.
His films are firmly grounded in his
sense of place. Much of “Houve ” is set in
March, when Chico and Juca spend time
on Porto Alegre’s beach. It’s the off-season,
and the only time their fathers can
afford to send their sons on vacation.
The beach is a lonely place then, and
contrasts sharply with the final beach
scene in February, where there are lots of
people and color.
“It is not uncommon in Porto Alegre
to have your city social relations and
your beach social relations, completely
unconnected, for the different parts of
the year,” Furtado said. In his typical way,
Furtado takes this traditional cliché and
plays with it. In the romance between
Roza and Chico, he shows what happens
when one holds on to the quintessential
summer fling and tries to bring it back to
the real world.
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