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ANTÔNIA
Directed by: Tata Amaral.
Produced by: Geórgia Costa Araújo & Amaral.
Written by: Roberto Moreira & Amaral.
Director of Photography: Jacob Sarmento Solitrenick.
Edited by: Idê Lacreta.
Music by: Beto Villares and Parteum.
Released by: Anywhere Road.
Language: Portuguese with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Brazil. 90 Minutes. Rated PG-13.
With: Negra Li, Cindy, Leilah Moreno, Quelynah, Cincy, Fernando Macário, Chico Santo, Thobias de Vai Vai & Sandra de Sá.

Fernando Meirelles’s City of God has inspired a creative outpouring, spotlighting growing up in Brazil’s favelas, the mountainside shantytowns surrounding huge, sprawling cities. While that film spawned the superlative television series City of Men, both projects have primarily featured young men, with women incidentally around for sex and romance.

Meirelles’s production company has taken director Tata Amaral under its wing, helping her complete, with Antônia, a trilogy of films about what she calls “feminine archetypes.” (The earlier two, A Sky of Stars and Through the Window, have not been widely distributed outside Brazil.) Amaral followed Meirelles’s lead to learn how to go from making a documentary on hip-hop to using non-professional actors in this film and its follow-up TV series about young black women living in the outskirts of São Paulo.

The titular vocal quartet displays formidable musical talent. Amaral brought together leading and rising stars of hip-hop and Afro music and dance styles to portray longtime friends who try to harmonize their voices and lives. The reflective narrator is Preta (Negra Li), a protective mother who leaves her cheating husband to return with her young daughter Emilia to her religious parents (played by prominent Brazilian musicians Sandra de Sá and Thobias de Vai Vai). Blonde Barbarah (Leilah Moreno) fiercely protects her gay brother Duda (Chico Santo). The youngest member, 16-year-old Lena (Cindy), lives under the thumb of her older possessive boyfriend, while the flirtations of Mayah (Quelynah) threaten the female bonding.

The performers’ real-life experiences and improvised dialogue were incorporated by co-writer Roberto Moreira into shaping the story, and the women penned the original celebratory rap songs, the film’s highlight, though the English subtitles sometimes seem incomplete and awkwardly translated.

While the male-oriented films about the favelas focus on drug dealers vs. civilians, the violence here concerns more the domestic threats and neighborhood bullies the women face. But these are street-savvy women who, when they take off their downtown high heels to trudge back home in their sneakers up the hills and winding stairs of their neighborhood, brook no sass from any man, no matter the dangerous consequences.

Sometimes poignant and intense, the slim plot of personal and professional struggles for success has many familiar elements of dozens up-from-the-bottom show biz movies from around the world. But uniquely, Antônia emphasizes the supportive importance of female friendship to survive and overcome family vicissitudes and responsibilities within a macho culture and a hierarchy based on shades of skin color. Nora Lee Mandel
September 21, 2007