O Som ao Redor
Kleber Mendonça Filho (2012)
The title sounds like a translation – awkward and limited compared with the original Portuguese, which you can tell is more mysteriously allusive. This is the first dramatic feature by Kleber Mendonça Filho and it’s certainly impressive, not least because of how long it remains absorbing, even though most of its 131 minutes feel anticipatory and its abrupt ending is disappointing. The neighbourhood is a street in Recife, the fifth-largest city of Brazil, whose inhabitants are predominantly middle-class. A preliminary montage of black-and-white photographs depicts a way of life – rural, impoverished, but with suggestions of a close-knit community – very different from the urban ones Mendonça goes on to describe (he also wrote the screenplay). The immediate implication is that the world of the photographs is somehow the basis for the world of the city dwellers; the connection is clarified once it’s revealed that Francisco, who still owns much of the property in the neighbourhood – made his fortune as a sugar baron. (Mendonça’s title – which means, literally, ‘the sound from round about’, surely refers to a context larger than the immediate physical environment.)
You wouldn’t expect a character such as Francisco to be a nice guy and this sharp-minded silver fox (W J Solha) is evidently a nasty piece of work. His scions are more ambiguous. One grandson, the European-educated João (Gustavo Jahn), is in effect the family’s estate agent but has a gently melancholy air. Another, Dinho (Yuri Holanda), is a university student by day and a delinquent car thief by night. As João’s new girlfriend Sofia (Irma Brown) prepares to leave his place next morning, she discovers her car’s been broken into and the CD player removed (a trademark Dinho crime). The security presence in the street doesn’t until now extend beyond a dog that seems to bark continuously. This gets on the nerves of Bia (Maeve Jinkings), another of the residents: on the night Sofia’s car is burgled, Bia has hidden drugs in a piece of meat she throws to the dog, which shuts it up. The next day, two men from a private security firm arrive to offer their services. Other characters in Neighbouring Sounds suspect that Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos) and his one-eyed sidekick haven’t appeared by chance – João asks how they knew about the car thefts, Francisco asks how they knew who he was. Clodoaldo’s answers are plausible but the viewer too assumes the security men must be there for a reason.
The film’s name gives primacy to the aural and Mendonça, with his sound designer Pablo Lamar, has created an absorbing soundtrack. Its overall effect is unnerving but its component parts are various: you’re reminded how familiar repeated noises can range from the reassuring to the infuriating as well as how unaccustomed ones can be frightening. Mendonça continues to play sounds throughout the closing credits – you stay with these in case of missing something significant even at this late stage. You keep thinking that something horrific is going to happen in Neighbouring Sounds. It never quite does, although the combination of the sound design, a couple of carefully placed dream sequences (one culminating in a waterfall that turns to blood and covers João) and the odd subliminal image (a dark figure glimpsed in the apartment where Clodoaldo and Francisco’s housekeeper Luciene (Clebia Sousa) are quickly having sex) is disquieting.
Mendonça is known as a maker of documentaries and the fine naturalistic acting, the spare dialogue he’s written for the cast and the realisation of the neighbourhood give the movie a quasi-documentary anchor. Occasionally, the film seems to be happening in real time and the effect is both boring and intriguing (a meeting of the residents’ association to discuss how to dismiss a past-it concierge is an example of this). Mendonça seems to imply that Brazil’s recent interracial and economic history bred not only the desire for revenge that (as is eventually made clear) the working-class Clodoaldo is looking to take on Francisco but also the dissatisfaction of younger generations exemplified by the well-off but purposeless João, Dinho and Bia. The last named – as desperately tense as she is bored – is especially striking in this respect. These people live their lives in apartments that are more than spacious. They seem vast and the characters are stranded in them.
1 April 2013
