"Paulista” is a slang term for Sao Paulo natives, the word derived from a large thoroughfare in the city. But this alternately energized and somber feature by Roberto Moreira is very much about some young denizens of the populous Brazilian city, though not all of them original creatures of the alpha metropolis. Marina (Silvia Lourenco), raised in the suburbs, has moved to Sao Paulo to become an actress. She shares an apartment with Suzana (Maria Clara Spinelli), a successful and stylish attorney.
On her second day there, Marina meets a downstairs neighbor, Jay (Fabio Herford), a schlubby poet with an inexplicable passion for a money-grubbing prostitute with no interest in a relationship. Jay leads Marina to a club, where she falls for a charismatic singer, Justine (Danni Carlos). The two initiate a passionate romance fraught with crazy drama: the self-destructive Justine constantly boozes and pops pills, and is in some kind of murky, though sexual, relationship with the possessive Nuno (Paulo Vilhena), who owns the club. Meanwhile, Suzana yields to the romantic overtures of Gil (Gustavo Machado), then worries what will happen when he learns she is a transsexual woman.
Moreira interweaves these storylines, though perhaps spends too much time on the most superficial, i.e., the doomed bond between Marina and Justine, full of tropes about a love triangle and artists and addiction. Suzana’s chapters, by contrast, concern a subject rarely explored in movies: just how does a transsexual woman or man tell a partner they were once the opposite gender? And Jay, who is hellbent on wooing a woman only interested in being with him at her hourly rate, is like some blind Romantic figure less infatuated with a woman than in living through extreme experiences to write about.
Moreira treats Sao Paulo itself like a fourth protagonist in Paulista, a city that doesn’t sleep and offers the only refuge to those who can rise above the roar by living in high-rises. Paulista is no celebration of urban hookups and yearning hearts, with happy endings available to those who wait. The film ends, somewhat surprisingly, on a note about mortality and loss, and having faith in a rest that will come to snuff out the anguish of living. Strongly recommended.