Orfeu

You can't keep a good myth down. Orpheus, who had last surfaced in a Carnaval setting in Marcel Camus's 1959 Black Orpheus, returns to Rio de Janeiro in this Carlos Diegues updating of the same Vinicius de Moraes play. Orfeu (Tony Garrido) is a child of the slums whose voice and guitar have earned him the title King of the Carnaval. He's a superstar, everybody loves him, and he has all the babes he wants, but he still gives back to the community -- his samba school looks set to win the Carnaval competition for the third time in a row, and he intervenes when brutish cops shoot up the neighborhood in search of Lucinho (Murilo Benício), his boyhood pal turned ganglord. That's when Eurídice (Patricia França), a beautiful Indian girl from the sticks, shows up and Orfeu believes that God really loves him. It all ends badly, of course, and in this case untidily as well. Diegues, who embodied the Brazilian New Wave with his Bye Bye Brasil (1979), tries to combine pagan, Christian, African, and every other mythology, including the postmodern pantheon of celebrity. Kind of like the Carnaval itself, except Diegues never taps into the celebration's primal passion or tragedy. Although it has moments of inspired fancy and tropical beauty, this Orfeu doesn't rise to the occasion. At the Avon.
-- Peter Keough