Brazillian Filmmaker Discusses Craft

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.