Capitu and the Chapter (Julio Bressane, 2021) (Patreon)

Alas, this is my first exposure to Bressane, possibly the key Brazilian director of his particular era. That era, incidentally, is the post-Cinema Novo movement known as Cinema de Boco do Lixo, or the "Mouth of Garbage" Cinema. Bressane's best-known film remains his 1969 cri de coeur entitled Killed the Family and Went to the Movies, one of the key works of Boco do Lixo.  Unlike a lot of other filmmakers from that group, Bressane has remained active and even evolved into something of an old master. However, as his films have gotten more overtly arty, they seem to have fallen off in terms of audience and festival interest. Bressane is arguably even more marginal now than he was back then.

Based on Capitu and the Chapter, I maybe see why. First of all, there is a pun in the title that doesn't really come across in English. The Portuguese title is Capitu e o Capítulo, and refers both to one of the female leads, Capitu (Mariana Ximenes), and the fact that the film is frequently punctuated by digressions featuring a writer / historian / librarian (Enrique Diaz) who waxes theoretical about some of Brazil's 19th century Romantic poets. Given this punctuation, each of the segments of the main narrative, involving a four-way crisscross of amorous attentions, might be considered a "chapter."

Capitu is never boring, exactly. It actually has a lot of good ideas, most of them related to Bressane's complex use of sound design. The two couples are featured in a dance sequence without music, with Ximenes and Vladimir Brichta doing ballroom while Josie Antello and Saulo Rodriguez are cutting a mean rug right next to them. Bressane amplifies the thuds and squeaks of the dancers' feet hitting the floor, heightening the surrealism of the moment. Also of note is Brichta's performance in the final third of the film when, consumed by jealousy, he suffers a kind of breakdown, lumbering around like Frankenstein's monster while everyone else behaves normally (relatively speaking).

Still, Capitu is not a particularly good film. Part of this is due to the borrowed stiltedness that is its primary m.o. For something so devoid of naturalism, it seems oddly familiar, and that's because Bressane's film strongly resembles second-tier Raúl Ruíz, with some declamatory, planimetric sections that tip a wide-brimmed hat to Manoel de Oliveira. The most noticeable departure from these allusive styles comes when Bressane inserts older found footage without warning. As it turns out, these are all clips from earlier Bressane films, and perhaps if I were more familiar with his work, this self-tribute wouldn't seem so unwarranted. Ultimately, Capitu is a film with a lot of odd ideas, presented in a recognizable art-film vernacular, but nothing hangs together very well.