Pixote

Made four years prior to his first English-language film, 1985's The Kiss of the Spider Woman, Hector Babenco's disturbing look at troubled Brazilian youth made several top 10 lists during its initial release. Portuguese slang for "peewee," the brutally naturalistic Pixote centers around the extremely dark (think Dickens under the influence of Marilyn Manson) odyssey of a 10-year-old São Paulo boy (Fernando Ramos de Silva), remanded to a childhood detention center where inhaling aerosol can fumes and homosexual rape seem like mild diversions compared to the potentially deadly abuse from the caregivers. Hooking up with a transvestite named Lilica and his sometime young male lover Dito, Pixote and his friends escape, embarking on a life of drug dealing and pimping, with tragic results both onscreen and off (the boy playing Pixote would eventually drift into crime in real-life and be killed). Both a harrowing indictment of an overcrowded and ineffectual Brazilian penal system and a frighteningly vivid journey through a morally bankrupt universe with conscienceless urchins who would frighten William Golding's little lords, Pixote still packs a gut punch 20 years later. Relatively featureless, the DVD retains the grainy, gritty look of the original. Recommended. (R. Pitman)