The Moving Creatures

This odd triptych of vignettes about Brazilian parents and tragic circumstances affecting their children begins with the tale of a busy working mother (Cida Moreira) whose college-age son is about to forgo her many morning indulgences now that he will have a school routine. When he falls out of bed and gets ready for the first day of a new quarter, police show up at the door in search of something, delivering a shock to Maria that is likely to fundamentally alter her conception of her son. In the second story, a sound engineer (Rômulo Braga) at a studio becomes distractible, even stumbling into a recording session by a wind ensemble and interrupting them. When he later joins his depressed wife (Andrea Marquee), it becomes clear that a tragedy has beset them as parents. Finally, a middle-aged couple (Henrique Schafer and Fernanda Vianna) meet up at a restaurant for a tearful reunion with the 16-year-old boy who was stolen from them in a maternity ward. While these situations all initially hold narrative promise, they don't pan out, and director Caetano Gotardo makes the very strange and disconcerting choice to cap all of the stories with the respective mothers singing songs that analyze what has happened to them and their children. A cinematic misfire (with a meaningless title) that taxes the viewer's patience with lengthy shots in which nothing happens and no stylistic resonance builds, this is not recommended. (T. Keogh)