“Red Monet” Opens The 16th Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival.

Posted by Robin Menken

Celebrating its 16th anniversary, the Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival (LABRFF) runs Oct 23-26 at the new Culver Theater owned by Amazon Studios.An Opening Night Gala kicks off the festival with a red-carpet event and cocktail party surrounding the premiere of Halder Gomes’s “Vermelho Monet” (Red Monet), a seductive exploration of a painter and his perpetual muse.  

Taking on a subject relatively rare in Brazilian film, Halder Gomes delivers a sensual meta film about the production and consumption of Fine Art.

Johannes Van Almeida (Chico Díaz) is an classically trained master painter of female figures recently released from prison after a scandalous forgery case. His beloved muse and accomplice Adele (Gracinda Nave), is wheel chair bound, lost in a form of Alzheimers. They live a quiet post-prison life. He dresses and grooms her, using outfits labeled with color tags.

Johannes suffers from achromatopsia, an transient deterioration in his vision that makes his world absent of colors. The worst thing that could happen to a painter. Although transient, his vision remains black and white until he glimpses a red haired woman in a cafe window.

His work is a paean to red haired women. He is obsessed with the color red, the color of blood, of life, the last color on the palette and the flame red of Monet's sunset. That particular shade of red, the color of his broken muse's hair, signifies True Love. He's rejected model after model, destroying canvases, failing to find another model to represent True Love, the only thing he can paint.

The woman glimpsed in the widow is Brazilian model/actress, Florence Lizz (Samantha Heck Müller) brought to Lisbon to star in a biopic about Portugal's iconic  feminist poet Florbela Espanca (called my Twin Soul by Fernando Pessoa, Portugal greatest poet). Hiring a Brazilian angers Portuguese fans of the tragic poetess who suicided at 36.

When next we glimpse Florence, she's at a gallery opening with her handsome costar Miguel (Duarte Gomes). She catches the eye of power Gallery owner Antoinette Léfèvre (Maria Fernanda Cândido).

Cândido's performance is the strongest element of the film. A slick, sexy polyglot, whose greed, power of manipulation and sensual desires flicker at the edge of her "cool", she quietly dominates all the scenes she's in. (Watch how her tongue quivers when she offers Johannes a fine cigar.)

Antoinette scoops up the New Girl in Town, and soon Antoinette and Florence are a sensual item.

Under pressure to live up to her iconic film role, Florence can't cut the mustard in her rehearsal. The director's in her face directing style make it all worse, and he tells her to get a coach. She refuses, promising him she will get it right.

There's a plus side to Antoinette and Florence's romance. Florence imports their passion into her performance, beginning to fill the character's shoes.

Antoinette is a high end Art crook. At her exclusive end of the business, Billionaires with massive egos war to own the most priceless, the most significant painting.  When her most lucrative client, Billionaire collector Laurent (Matamba Joaquim) realizes a priceless "unknown" painting he's bought from her has a twin held by a collector in China, he is livid. Antoinette has held him up to ridicule. She owes him.

This drives Antoinette to look up and old conspirator-Johannes.  He confesses he made two copies of the painting she passed off as an unknown painting by Jean Jacques Henner, painter of the famous portrait of Saint Fabiola.

Antoinette needs a masterpiece by him to mollify Laurent. Aware of Johanne's obsession with redheaded models, she eventually sends Florence to him, suggesting she can use the experience to mold her film character. (Pandering is not beneath her.)

Steven (Fernando Rodrigues) plays a complicitous British Auctioneer.

Beautifully shot In Lisbon and Paris, the somewhat languid film is helped immensely by a clever, romantic soundtrack mixing fado, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Faure,  Donna Summer's Hot Stuff.

Hot Tip: the following docs come highly recommended to me-"Symphony of a Common Man" , ”You've Made My Samba”, "Invisible Bodies” and "The Highjacking of Flight 375".

“LABRFF is proud to present a diverse line-up of independent storytellers. The festival has seen tremendous growth, allowing us to showcase and nurture important voices that the world needs to hear”, said Meire Fernandes, LABRFF founder.

The 2023 Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival (LABRFF) will showcase over 40 independent films from Brazil and around the world, combining the best of features, documentaries, shorts, kids, and environmental films as well as tribute screenings, a celebrity-filled red carpet and more.

This year LABRFF introduces the Kids selection bringing independent films to a historically under-represented audience – children. Each year, a small selection of family-friend independent films will be presented for young audiences, to help them develop an appreciation for movies that don’t screen in multiplexes, have expanded universes, or merchandise tie-ins with major toy companies. In addition, Faith-Based and Environmental films will also be included in the festival.

Competitions:
    Narrative Feature Competition – Brazilian feature films
    Documentary Feature Competition – Brazilian documentaries
    Shorts Competition: Brazilian Shorts
    International Competition: Features, Documentaries & Shorts
    Kids Program – Best Kids Movie
    Faith-Based Movies – Best Movie
    Environmental Movies – Best Movie