More from the movie corner of Graziella: Neighboring Sounds
This week’s film takes us to Recife, the largest urban area of the Northeast in Brazil. Set in a middle-class neighborhood and oscillating between realism and allegory, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds (2012) quietly unravels a society haunted by both its colonial past and by the threat of future violence. Mendonça Filho opens the narrative with a series of black-and-white photos that depict aspects of the hard life of rural workers in the past; and his film deftly demonstrates that, in a way, the old economic logic is still in place. The film’s camera work and framing neatly evoke the claustrophobia of privileged communities afraid of their own shadows. Make sure, however, that you don’t miss the subtleties of the ‘sound all-around’ (which is the actual translation of the original title O Som ao Redor). Filled with comic moments alternating with sporadic, quiet horror, Neighboring Sounds will not only entertain you but also make you think about analogies between Recife and where we live.
Watch Neighboring Sounds on Kanopy HERE.
