Behind the Sun Reviews

Walter Salles's follow-up to his breakthrough feature CENTRAL STATION may lack that film's deep emotional resonance, but it does confirm one thing: Salles isn't just one of Brazil's most promising directors — he's a great entertainer. This stirring period drama, based on Albanian novelist Ismail Kadaré's Broken April, has it all: bitter feuds, torrid romance, family tragedy and as much blood, sweat and gunpowder as a Sergio Leone western. Salles and co-writers Sérgio Machado and Karim Aïnouz shift Kadaré's setting from the highlands of Northern Albania to Brazil's forbidding Inhamuns Badlands, circa 1910. There, on a parched, God-forsaken stretch of desert known as Stream-of-Souls, two devastated families fight an age-old blood feud over land and honor. In February, Inacio Breves (Caio Junqueira), the eldest son of a family of poor sugar cane growers, was gunned down in retribution for his murder of a member of the wealthier Ferreira clan. Now that next full moon has risen and the sun has yellowed the unavenged blood on Inacio's shirt, tradition dictates that Inacio's 20-year-old brother, Tonio (Rodrigo Santoro), must set out across the plains to retaliate. Tonio's adoring little brother (Ravi Ramos Lacerda) — who's only referred to as "the kid" by his parents but is dubbed "Pacu" by Clara (Flavia Marco Antonio) and Salustiano (Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos), a pair of traveling carnival performers camped in the nearby town — begs him not to go. But Tonio won't defy his unforgiving father (Jose Dumont) and once the deed is done, Tonio knows it's just a matter of weeks before another Ferriera lays to rest the soul of his recently departed kinsman by coming for Tonio. Tonio knows he's a walking dead man, so when Puco tells him about the beautiful Clara, he sneaks out for one last breath of life and, possibly, love. As in CENTRAL STATION, Salles and cinematographer Walter Carvalho use the Brazilian landscape to great effect, presenting the barren terrain of Stream-of-Souls — a place "somewhere behind the sun" — as a stark desert that's not without a certain austere beauty, but hardly seems worth the bloodshed. Salles is a master storyteller, and the film's pacing is flawless; he manages to weave in complex themes of familial responsibility and personal freedom without letting the action flag or losing sight of the greater tragedy that afflicts the Breves family: their extreme poverty. Bereft of everything else, honor may be all they have left.