Central Station

To experience Fernanda Montenegro's magnificent Oscar-nominated performance is to demand a recount from the Motion Picture Academy. This profoundly-moving Brazilian film can be superficially compared to John Cassavettes's Gloria, in which a lonely, hard-hearted older woman rediscovers her humanity in the company of a vulnerable child. Montenegro stars as Dora, a former teacher who works at the titular railway station writing letters for illiterates. At home, she cruelly and cynically decides which she will mail, tear up or toss in her drawer, which her more kind-hearted neighbor refers to as "purgatory." When one of her customers is hit by a bus, she reluctantly takes in the woman's ten-year-old son, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira, reportedly discovered by director Walter Salles in an airport, shining shoes). Her first instinct is to sell the child to a black market adoption agency, but when she learns he may be killed for his organs, she steals him back. Together, they embark on a cross-country odyssey to find the father he has never met. Montenegro's unsentimental performance defies conventional movie manipulation and gives this films its devastating impact. Highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)