Just perfect...

Absolutely Fantastic

The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth and laughs.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The movie shouts at every scene: somebody else, like the State, paid for this movie. It reminds me of crappy popular European movies from the 1970s, all made with State money for the mindless pride of politicians and bureaucrats: our nation is so good! Everything is a missed hit about this movie.The "kids" are much older. And I do not care about the actor's ages. They can be 95 years old as far as I care. But they certainly do not look the given age. See above: some useless actors were used, not because they fit the bill, but because they have enough experience and relationships that the syndicate or some politician did the casting. And how come the fresh flower from a middle class family has fake breasts already healed? Another proof of the power of prayer!Each and every scene is slow. The actors are moving too slow. The camera is moving too slow. I doubt this story can fill the usual 90 minutes. And it's almost two hours long! Because the wages were certain, nobody bothered to learn anything about the life of the characters. Probably most could not be bothered to read the entire book. Now, Brazil has enough backwards religious communities so some might be surprised about the concept of prostitution or homosexuality. But these are actors. The year is 2011. And there is such thing as the internet. And not only the actors are bad and rigid, but the whole team is junk. Take the scene from the beginning, when the girl is introduced to her flat mates. They are all, like Jesus at the last supper, turned towards the camera. And the newcomer? Easy! She finds a place left for her and turns for the camera.Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch

Raquel Pacheco was adopted by an upper middle class family in Sao Paulo. However, at 17 she broke away from this life to live in a brothel. She uses Bruna as her working name, and Surfistinha as her nickname. She does well for a while, but her relationship with the other women becomes turbulent. She moves to a new apartment setting with Gabi after meeting Carol at a dance club. She has even more success, starts a blog about her activities, which brings her even more business. She enjoys the spotlight for a while. Eventually she starts using drugs; unfortunately, the drug use and the fame hit about the same time. She crashes over this, and ends up chasing men in cars.After recovering from the drugs, she writes a book about her experiences, and the book does fairly well. Her popularity in Brazil inspired the current movie, which is a dramatic representation shown on television of a section of her life.Netflix showed this as 'Confessions of a Brazilian Call Girl.'------Conclusions------There is quite a lot of skin and simulated sexual activity shown in this film. TV14 seems a bit light of a rating; NC17 might be closer to accurate. So watch under advisement.Bruna Surfistinha is a soft core porn film that exploits Deborah Secca's physique more than anything else. The acting is better than that of American 'reality' television, but not by a whole lot.As a dramatic treatment of a difficult life, the film seems too rosy, even though it depicts hard times that Raquel experienced.One line summary: Rise, fall, and recovery of a Brazilian call girl and media star.Three stars of five.------Scores------- Cinematography: 7/10 The film looks good for the most part, but it often shows TV/VHS quality rather than theatrical quality.Sound: 6/10 was not that relevant to me. I do not understand Brazilian Portuguese, and the incidental music was not a factor. The subtitles seemed to be in reasonable parallel to the actors' intentions.Acting: 5/10 OK, but not great, as noted above. Deborah Secco and Drica Moraes were the best.Screenplay: 6/10 The film does tell a story, though it is more than a bit disjointed at times.

If you live in Brazil, you certainly have already heard about Bruna Surfitinha (both movie and person). She gained fame making porns, and going to TV shows after some time. Whether you think she is right or wrong, this is not the point of the movie.The movie focus on her life after leaving home. Who she lived with in the prostitution life, what she had to face, among other stuff. It is good at showing that the fame messes with EVERYBODY's head and it's impossible to continue being humble as one was in the past. I believe that Raquel made her mistake once she began using cocaine; it spoiled her job, her companionship and her money. If she didn't try that drug, maybe she could have had a decent life and stopped working with that after some months.The acting in this movie is something that I have to disagree with others opinion. For me, the acting was very bad and seemed amateurish lots of times, specially in the first 30 minutes. Also, the scene with the jerk of her school was veery very lame, they could have made it thousand times better. I felt embarrassed for the filmmakers in that scene. Also, the man that plays her brother acts very bad. He spoiled the scene that was supposed to be dramatic and ended up being lame for the bad acting.Sadly, this film didn't show what were the reasons that she left home, didn't approach her relationship with her family. So it got a little hard for us to understand her reasons to do that. It felt incomplete for missing this aspect. However, this film is still average and entertaining, despite the lameness.

'Bruna Surfistinha' is the story of Rachel Pacheco, an adopted Brazilian girl that constantly suffered from bullying and, feeling apart of everyone, leaved her house and family at age of 18 in search for independence to prove herself and the others that she could be someone special. Then she finds a job opportunity that could give what she was so desperately wanting. She really didn't care if it's from sex, she just wanted to make money and achieve her objectives. "More sex, more money", that's what she thinks to keep surviving.During her hooker years, Bruna Surfistinha did start maintaining a blog, writing about her sexual experiences with her different clients, giving them special and personalized treatment in bed and also reviews and ratings about their performance in her blog, making them some kind special and taking each one of them away from their miserable unhappy life they lived in. She conquered their appreciation and the anonymous mouth-to-mouth publicity made her one of the most desirable prostitutes at that time. The blog was a successful step making her famous and respected in her business. She made a lot of money with important and rich people, living in a first class condo and having everything she ever wanted.'What comes easy goes easy', that's what people say. Not as easy as it's supposed, but everything did go as easy as said. With her successful sex business she overrated herself and meantime became addicted to drugs, fell in depression and lost almost everything, coming back to where she started: from nowhere. Then she reemerged, got all the money she needed back to stop living from sex and wrote a best seller called "O Doce Veneno do Escorpião" (The Sweet Poison Of The Scorpion) in which the movie is based on.That's how she became famous in Brazil. All of this - except the book episode - is in the movie.When the film was announced many people laughed and thought it was a joke, because it's not necessary read the book to know that Rachel Pacheco (aka Bruna Surfistinha) isn't a Diablo Cody (the American ex-stripper who also became famous as a blogger and won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2007's Juno). Her fame was much more a popular response against taboo than just a natural talent. Even so, the book and the life of Rachel Pacheco offered enough material for a movie that fulfills its intents.Unlike what was previously believed, the film is surprising in all aspects. Even looking like a TV movie sometimes, the debut direction of Marcus Baldini worth some attention. The well developed screenplay with natural and accurate dialogs is also a plus. The cast, the soundtrack and the edition - which is largely responsible for most of the movie's development - are top of note here. The cinematography sometimes are beautiful and intensifies some dramatic and erotic moments without being appealing. Also, nudity and sex scenes here are just used objectively and never being abusive or compelling, very different from some ordinary titles that uses nudity and sex just as an instrument to attract audience which is very expected here but never delivers more than the necessary. The movie can easily be defined as some kind of Christiane F (1981) meets Pretty Woman (1990) because Bruna is what Julia Roberts' character would be without Richard Gere.The movie is a slap on the face of those who underestimated its quality just by its topic. Deborah Secco, known in Brazil for her roles in soap operas since she was a teenager, finally grew up as an actress because the movie succeeds most by her performance. Credits should also be given to the supporting actresses, especially Drica Moraes (as madam Larissa), the greatness of her work is evident every time she appears. 'Bruna Surfistinha' never tries to give the character a martyr neither a heroin image, she's just someone that simply got the job and now is suffering its consequences. Much less tries to make her life a modern fairy tale being - perhaps - screenplay's greatest advantage and also what makes the movie never fall into cheap emotionalism.For sure it's not the best thing you will ever watch, but also not the worst. Obviously it needs to be watched as a movie and not as a biographical thing with some lessons you need to learn because even the ugliest truth becomes a beautiful thing in movies, that's why it's worth watching without any profound expectations.