THE THREE MARIAS

Brazil, 2002, 90 minutes, Colour.
Marieta Severo, Julia Lemmertz, Maria Luisa Mendoca, Luiza Mariani.
Directed by Aluisio Abranches.

Emotion runs high and is not reined in in Hispanic and Portuguese cultures. It is manifested in stories that are highly colourful, melodramatic and passionate. This is definitely the case in this brief Brazilian pot boiling comment on society and on vengeance.

A longish contemplation of a man and a woman clashing on a cliff gives way to brutal action as three men are violently murdered. A matriarch (in fact, the woman on the cliff) calls her three daughters and charges them to arrange to take three lives in revenge, especially a corrupt business man (in fact, the man on the cliff). Each of the daughters goes to the man of their mother's choice and commissions the killings. There are killings but not in the way the mother planned and this has repercussions on the daughters. This plot outline does not do justice to the flamboyant and colourful style of the film which, at times, leaves its audience gasping with its stylised manners and its stylised violence.

A glimpse into a culture of an eye for an eye.

1. The melodramatic aspect of the film? The philosophy of an eye for an eye and its consequences?

2. The Brazilian locations, the mountains, the countryside, the towns? Emotions, violence, melodrama - features of Brazilian way of life?

3. The widescreen processes, the locations, the vivid nature of the action, the musical score?

4. The prologue and its length, the audience concentrating on looking at the two characters, the landscape, the cave? The flashbacks to this scene later in the film, explaining what was happening and the consequences?

5. The initial killings, the visual violence? Arcangelo and his ruthlessness?

6. The mother, her grief at the news of the deaths, summoning her daughters, at the table, the three girls, their first name being Maria? The explanation of the situation, sending them on a mission? Her telling them that it was their destiny - but that they were not to kill the murderers?

7. The structure of the film, each of the women going to see the person who was to do the killing, not seeing the killing, the aftermath and their return to their mother? The flashbacks to reveal that each of the women had done the killing?

8. The women and their seeking the killers, the personality of each of the killers, ruthless, in prison, violent, the policeman? The violent man - and his killing the wrong man? The strong man? The policeman, the rabies, the daughter helping him to recover?

9. The consequences for the men? The consequences for the women? The flashbacks and revealing that each of them had done the killing?

10. Their return to their mother, her grief at what had happened? The man who had proposed to her at the beginning? Enemy for decades? His welcoming the senator and the senator being killed instead of him?

11. Murder, vengeance, grief, an eye for an eye and its consequences?