Mutum

I missed the very beginning of Mutum, and perhaps wasn't in a sufficiently un-restless mood that evening to be able to appreciate the film properly anyway (IE - it's slow). Mutum has a bit of the Italian neorealism about it, except that it's set in Brazil and about sixty years after the heyday of Italian neorealism. The story concerns Thiago, a dreamy kid living with his family in a quiet rural area, and who's lumbered with an explosvely tempered, abusive father. None of the kids go to school, a point I felt quite stupid to have missed until it came up in the narrative. Their days are filled with play, a suite of domesticated animals and a niggling sense of discomfort. This is all lucidly filmed, and there are moments of great charm, but it's so incredibly natural and anti-dramatic for the most part that I found it hard to maintain my engagement with it. Maybe it was just the wrong day and time for me to see this.