Jason Sondhi
A chance encounter inspires an extraordinary film. In between projects, Writer/Director Gabriel Amaral found himself in the rural splendor of Northeastern Brazil and during this time met a local cacao farmer. Amaral and farmer hit it off. The farmer shared his story with the budding filmmaker and his personal experience and observations about his town serve as the loose basis for Lugar Algum, a classic drama about a worker on a farm about to undergo a change in ownership. It is at once a character meditation of a man who finds deep, almost spiritual communion with the land, but also a story about change—one’s resistance toward it, and the precarity of things we bind our dreams to. Our main character, “Nego”, struggles to find grace in the face of a capitalistic system that pits individual incentives against notions of honor or fairness.
We meet Nego at work. Across acres of land, he is seen tending to fences, clearing trees. It is isolating work, but Nego’s flat demeanor does not exhibit a grim resolve, but instead a mien of placid tranquility. He strikes us as a man that finds peace in his labors. He is not without care though—an exchange of voicemails establishes a lady in his life, one who resignedly asks, “What can I do to make you like me as much as you like that farm?” Nego also contends with Rafael, the land’s owner. A young-ish man, jovial and familiar, the pair evince a bond. However Rafael is ditching the farm to a French couple and, despite assurances, will not intercede with the new buyers to ensure Nego’s continued place, post-sale.
In a couple of speaking gigs this past month, talking to filmmakers and students, I’ve found myself contemplating the difficulty of character development in shorts. Long-attracted by hi-concept premises and stylistic, vibe-heavy films, I’ve mused that the limited real estate of shorts is simply not good at deep empathetic connections and coherent, fully-realized character arcs. If, to paraphrase Faulkner, the only stories worth a damn are of those of the human heart in conflict with itself, that is a problem! Thus, of course, a film pops up to remind me that this line of thinking is nonsense.
Lugar Algum is an old-fashioned short film and makes a good case for the old ways. It is a slow-burning story that respects its audience by committing several sins against the modern ideal of an internet short film—it is difficult to explain the appeal of the film in a logline, and then nothing much happens for the first five minutes. It even has the temerity to include credits at the front! Yet the patience it requires is necessary and rewarding. It is a film that revels in atmosphere, with the natural splendor of its surroundings serving as an ancillary character. This has its pleasures—Amaral and his DP, Jerome Kim, are addicted to golden hour so the photography is fantastic—but it is certainly a film that luxuriates in the spaces between the character interactions that power its plot.
A time-obsessed online critic who sees the film’s 23min runtime can easily suggest that much of this material should simply be cut, but Lugar Algum is the rare film where the process of action, the routine of labor, and the product of everyday tasks are not simple worldbuilding window dressing, they are character beats. It is the use of this screentime in support of character development and as a negative space to the film’s conflicts that is the film’s most important trick. Nego is a man defined by his work, his connection to the land. The honesty and care he places into it is descriptive of his internal sense of honor. The commitment to depicting this side of the character is both essential to understanding Nego, but also through it, deepening the film’s conflicts—Nego’s love of the farm set against the possibility of love and companionship, and Nego’s subservience as a marginalized laborer against his self-righteous fury at not being protected during the process of the sale.
The relationship between Nego and Rafael is exquisitely handled, as the latter seeks to downplay the hierarchical nature of their employer/employee relationship.
As much as Lugar Algum concerns itself primarily with the particular of its story and character, it is hardly solipsistic. Serving on the jury at the Bushwick Film Festival in 2020, I was part of the panel that awarded the film the festival’s “Best Short” honor. This was on the heels of the George Floyd protests that summer in America, and while I do not like to look at film primarily through a socio-political lens, Lugar Algum is timely in its themes. Amaral finds critique of the general via his interrogation of the particular, and the film is a treatise on the exploitation of labor, of gentrification, and of the inherited status quo, with race hanging above it all. Amaral explains:
“As the story I wished to tell presented itself to me, throughout script development, I understood that I wanted to show the different ways in which people maintain the status quo they inherited from previous generations and not only those who benefit from it, but also those who suffer because of it. Why, in 2020, does it still feel like such an act of defiance for someone to stick up for themselves and call another person out on maintaining the status quo? What needs to change for this to stop being the case?”
Key to this aim is Rafael. The owner of the farm is a great character—jovial, seemingly progressive, his demeanor seeks to deflect from the inherently hierarchal nature of the employer/employee relationship, and the film is more heartbreaking for it. There is a certain gruff honesty to a man that will fuck you over because it is in his interest and he can. It sucks, but it is transparent and predictable. It is worse to be besties and feed Nego dreams until the rubber hits the road. It is the hope that kills, and it is that sense of betrayal that powers the film’s climax.
For all its positives, the film’s standout element might just be its writing. There is a concision to the way the film is built, with very few scenes of actual dialogue, and the themes that Amaral is exploring are complex but embedded effortlessly. It is therefore of little surprise that his debut feature as a screenwriter, a Brazilian remake of the Dutch film, Cool Kids Don’t Cry, is set to hit cinemas in 2022. The filmmaker also has two further features in development, one of which he hopes to direct.