O jardim das espumas

Bombings, King Kong, Hitler, and Nazi crowds saluting and celebrating the leader with a ridiculous moustache. A counterpoint is ofered by some open shots of young naked bodies. Hell and paradise, war and love, the uniformed and the uninhibited; the opposition of signs is a dominant poetic principle here, a tension that even brings about a major rift between sound and image. One recurring example here that is paradigmatic of the film is the sonorous violence of machine-guns being set against with the placidity of the images showing nature, or sensual pleasure. Opposites never reconcile. The programmatic narrative chaos is intelligible enough to convey the idea that the emissary of an (imaginary) galaxy has arrived to implement economic and political agreements with his peers in this world. Rosemberg Filho chooses to represent society’s own contradictions and those of the time in which he was filming, as well as the place of the filmmaker within the dramatic present allegorically alluded to throughout the plot. (Roger Koza)