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Greta

Country: Brazil, Language: Portuguese, 97 mins

Gay | Trans | Drama | 2019

Director: Armando Praça
Writer: Armando Praça
Producer: Armando Praça; Nara Aragão; Maurício Macêdo

CGiii Comment

She wants to be left alone! You heard the lady! No doubt, she'll change her mind!

This is a difficult film...if you can stomach [and swallow] a medicine-stealing, patient-abusing nurse who - even though he wants to be left alone - takes in and shacks up with a [much younger] on-the-run murderer...then, this here film is for you. Clinical ethics don't get a look in!

It's a big ask...not helped by Armando Praça's tendency to over-stretch - practically - every scene. More focus would have helped...especially in the stronger [and less-explored] storyline - between Pedro and Daniela - a palliative friendship...that should have brought a tear to the every eye. Alas, Mr Praça favours the more controversial route...ablaze with [unnecessary] explicit sex.

Intergenerational relationships seem to furrow quite a few brows...is it love? How can it be?!? Or, is it just a meal-ticket? Of course it is! If Jean [the murderer] hadn't been a murderer-on-the-run...then, these questions might not have been answered with such ease. It's a simple case of sex in exchange for sanctuary. It's all too easy...although a couple of spanners are thrown into the works...remember, she want to be left alone...and, then there's a bit of blackmail to spice things up...in truth, it all becomes a bit of mess...which is a shame.

Marco Nanini delivers a solid and revealing performance...this could have been an absolute tear-jerker...about two friends running out of things to say, running out of time together...their vulnerabilities could have/would have/should have gripped any audience.

All this film needed was a damn good script editor...and, a box of tissues.

Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

The hospital in Fortaleza, Brazil, is so overcrowded that 70-year-old nurse Pedro cannot find a bed for his transgender friend Daniela, who is suffering from kidney failure. Without further ado, he secretly takes a wounded young man, who is under police guard on suspicion of murder, to his home and instead gives the young man’s hospital bed to Daniela. In spite of the young man’s past, a tender, physical relationship develops between the caring Pedro, whose passion for the actress Greta Garbo even influences his sex life, and Jean, his convalescent house guest. When they go to the gay sauna, Pedro is the oldest person there, prompting Jean to call him ‘my old cocksucker’. But how seriously should Pedro take Jean’s stories? And what exactly are the young man’s intentions?

Armando Praça’s affectionate and dignified cinematic debut Greta tells a tale of friendship, love, sex and age. Surrounded as he is by sickness, death and other disasters on a daily basis, Pedro is possessed of the kind of strength of character that means he is not easily fazed. Not even when he makes a surprising discovery about Jean.