Man Of The Year (Brazil, 2003)

The Man Of The Year, aka O Homem Do Ano, is a remarkable film that’s equal parts crime melodrama, political satire and Brazilian erotica seamlessly combined by director Jose Henrique Fonseca. Murilo Benicio delivers an electrifying performance that stays in the memory long after the film’s bizarre climax.

Man Of The Year is the story of Maiquel, a Brazilian dude who loses a bet and pays the price by having his hair dyed bright blonde, embarrassing to his circle of pals because it makes him “look gay”. The penalty backfires because Cledir (Claudia Abreu), the colorist at the beauty salon is a hot babe and hooks up with him.

Returning to the bar where his boys hang out to show off his new locks, everybody gets a good laugh except for asshole Suel, who won the bet but resents Maiquel’s cool attitude. The next day Maiquel evens the score unfairly by shooting Suel in the back on a deserted street, the only witness to the murder being Suel’s teenage girlfriend Erica (Natalia Lage).

Suel was such a scumbag and neighborhood terror that the police refuse to take Maiquel in even after he confesses to the murder, commending him by sating “Good work taking the scum off the streets”. Neighbors and local merchants leave food and gifts at his doorstep, the ultimate gift being a pot bellied piglet Maiquel names “Bill Clinton”.

Things get complicated when Erica shows up at his door needing a place to stay now that her thug boyfriend is dead. Erica is a steaming mass of budding nubile sexuality, staying at Maiquel’s crib and putting a cramp on Cledir’s play time with Maiquel. Cledir wants to marry Maiquel but Erica is mentally more in Maiquel’s league, showering with the door open and playing with the pig, who Cledir resents.

Maiquel caves in and marries Cledir (with Erica sulking in the background), getting a job at the local pet store. His toothache sends him to Dr. Carvalho (Jorge Doria), a dentist who fixes his teeth for free for killing that black scum Suel and makes a bizarre proposal during the dental operation.

Dr. Carvalho and his businessmen friends will pay him a huge salary if he continues killing street thugs that offend them, who not coincidentally are poor and black. Maiquel accepts and systematically killing every thug he’s contracted to kill, filling up his pockets with more money than he’s ever seen. Cledir tightens the screws on Maiquel to give her a baby and kick Erica out.

Maiquel gives her the baby she’s wanted but Erica stays, banging Maiquel when the missus is away. Meanwhile Suel’s gangsta pals get their revenge by waxing each of Maiquel’s friends one by one. The trail of blood continues when Maiquel accidentally kills Cledir shortly after his birthday.

At first Erica is remorseless about dumping Cledir’s body but finally cracks and goes to church to repent for her sins. No longer following thugs, she’s now a disciple of a young, good-looking priest. Maiquel promptly beats him up. Losing Bill Clinton, Cledir, Erica and all his old buddies from the violence that he started, he finally decides to end the trail of blood by killing off the businessmen’s committee that put him up to the hit man job he grew sick of.

The film ends with Maiquel stripping the hair color worn like a phony halo and returns to his black hair color, leaving town and the deaths that haunted him behind.

Man Of The Year is based on a novel called O Matador by Patricia Melo and never gets boring. The screenplay has deft touches of sexuality, humor and menace. Breno Silveira’s cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, making even the most grubby and grimy Brazilian slum look like a colorful picture postcard. If you like wild movies with guns, girls and cute pigs that eat shoes then Man Of The Year will make you smile.

Nightmerica

It was 1985, yeah, we were right in the middle of the Eighties and living in America was everything we ran away from, colonial England. America finally built a class system and you were either in the upper classes with your nose in the air or the lower classes with a cocky peasant chip on your shoulder. “Vanity Fair” was the big magazine of the day, published by creepy gay Republicans and surprise, snobby Englishmen. Every issue canonized fascists like Imelda Marcos, Moammar Kadaffi, and Ron & Nancy Reagan. Yuppies were in style with their materialism and designer mania and it was cool to mock hippies, peace, love and ecology.

The Eighties were lonely and I spent many Sundays alone on the beach, tanning so I would feel sunny even though my disposition was gloomy. When I got to a good spot on the beach I pulled my jeans and t-shirt off and lay in the sand, my head resting against a bed of sand. I closed my eyes with my cool black hair falling in my face, my eyelids red and restful inside.

And the kids weren’t alright: rock music was absolute garbage in the Eighties, either New Wave nerds with their bleeping keyboards whining about Big Brother and paranoia, or Punk Rock jocks screaming their fat thick necks about Big Brother and paranoia. I wasn’t nerdy enough for New Wave and not caveman enough for Punk Rock. Goth was okay but I didn’t like drugs or fags called Damien with their clove cigarettes.

I bumped around from one temp assignment to another wondering if I had a future at all. All week long I’d check into one antiseptic firm after another in downtown LA: Atlantic Richfield, proofreading contracts, Thomas Cook travelers checks (working in their vault), Transamerica Corporation, yawn. I’d get my weekly check every Thursday and spend it on bad movies, bad records, and even worse nightclubs where I’d run into musicians I used to play with who got signed to the majors and would shamelessly snub me. It wasn’t a wonderful life.

The sky was cloudy and the sun was fighting its way through to shine down on me. The sea breeze was light and spicy. I could hear the ocean waves crashing like thunder and booming like the hooves of a thousand horses racing towards me.

The US Government wanted us to believe that they were the greatest society in the world and it was going to be a tough sell, given that our President cut off funding for programs to aid the elderly, shutting down countless institutions for the insane, and turning his back on AIDS research. And he had the blessing of the Revs. Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker. With all this apathy and arrogance I kept my fingers crossed and wished for a terrible calamity to befall the United States for their selfishness and xenophobia. Soon enough it would happen in New Orleans, in New York, even in smug Los Angeles. But not before I would suffer first, spending several years homeless and living on the streets and in jails. The past was very dark and the future had a long way to go before it would be bright again.

The sun finally broke through the clouds and its warmth engulfed me. I could hear the sea gulls shrieking in the sky as they flew in circles above me and around the empty beach.