Playing

November. 09,2007      
Rating:
8.4
Trailer Synopsis Cast

Following a newspaper ad, ordinary women tell part of their life stories to director Eduardo Coutinho, which are then re-enacted by actresses, blurring the barriers between truth, fiction and interpretation.

You May Also Like

Frenzy
Paramount+
Frenzy
After a serial killer strangles several women with a necktie, London police identify a suspect—but he claims vehemently to be the wrong man.
Frenzy 1972
Final Destination 5
Max
Final Destination 5
In this fifth installment, Death is just as omnipresent as ever, and is unleashed after one man’s premonition saves a group of coworkers from a terrifying suspension bridge collapse. But this group of unsuspecting souls was never supposed to survive, and, in a terrifying race against time, the ill-fated group frantically tries to discover a way to escape Death’s sinister agenda.
Final Destination 5 2011
The Book of Eli
Max
The Book of Eli
A post-apocalyptic tale, in which a lone man fights his way across America in order to protect a sacred book that holds the secrets to saving humankind.
The Book of Eli 2010
Saltburn
Prime Video
Saltburn
Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton, who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family's sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.
Saltburn 2023
Fargo
Prime Video
Fargo
Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt... but he's got a plan. He's going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It's going to be a snap and nobody's going to get hurt... until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who'll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom... you betcha!
Fargo 1996
The Wolverine
Disney+
The Wolverine
Wolverine faces his ultimate nemesis - and tests of his physical, emotional, and mortal limits - in a life-changing voyage to modern-day Japan.
The Wolverine 2013
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Max
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 1975
Five Nights at Freddy's
Prime Video
Five Nights at Freddy's
Recently fired and desperate for work, a troubled young man named Mike agrees to take a position as a night security guard at an abandoned theme restaurant: Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. But he soon discovers that nothing at Freddy's is what it seems.
Five Nights at Freddy's 2023
Man of Steel
Max
Man of Steel
A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind.
Man of Steel 2013
Interstellar
Prime Video
Interstellar
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Interstellar 2014

Reviews

Hellen
2007/11/09

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

... more
Evengyny
2007/11/10

Thanks for the memories!

... more
Baseshment
2007/11/11

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

... more
Scarlet
2007/11/12

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

... more
Niv_Savariego
2007/11/13

If you get a chance, go see this film. A very moving, highly emotional experience. It revolves around questions of motherhood, the loss of young children and, what seems like the exact opposite - unexpected pregnancies. The director seems to have found a way to reflect on the subject through actresses assuming the roles of mothers and daughters. We get to see some live interviews and some live acting, often the live acting breaks up and turns into an interview. The director messes with our expectations (trying to figure out which one is which, who is "real" - an actress explains why using tears as a sign of authenticity will not work), but that's not the main thrust of the film. Reality does play a part in the movie, but not the one you expect (the actresses' role, in fact, seems just as "real" as any other). Being a mother, acting, being a daughter, it all seems interconnected, it flows into one another. One of the women interviewed is called "Aleta", from the Greek "Alethia" - unveiled truth. The director doesn't miss the connection, and asks the actress playing that woman if she is "having trouble with the part of Aleta".What is interesting, and forms perhaps a third movement inside the film is the role of dreams. Many significant events recounted in the interviews happened in dreams. Dreams that seem to have changed reality forever. As an axis for the entire film, we get to see one brief interview, dreamy, almost hallucinatory, the only one to be shown to us without the "real" counterpart. This woman had sex only once, gave birth accidentally to a daughter, gave her away, and loves her with all her heart. Her story, just like the double voiced song at the end, perhaps even the film itself, feels both comical and tragic at same time.

... more
debblyst
2007/11/14

Just when Eduardo Coutinho's (semi)documentaries seemed to have become uncomfortably predictable -- when his personalist, inquisitive, biased, "screw-impartiality" style seemed to take over whatever reality he was investigating at the time -- "Jogo de Cena" arrives to show us that, at 74, he has found extra breath and is at the top of his game. I have little to add to blur4fun spot-on comment here, except to say this is one of the wittiest formalist exercises on film structure in recent memory. It proves that imagination and intelligence can make seemingly ordinary material -- life stories told (or enacted) by women who may or may not be actresses -- rise to puzzling metalinguistic heights when cleverly rearranged and interconnected. It's also a well-humored investigation about the elastic boundaries of the eternal "truth or artifice" issue in the documentary form.At first, what we see on the screen seems to belong to daytime TV slice-of-life talk-shows: people spilling out their personal dramas and tragedies. But, as in Jean Rouch's partly fake "Chronique d'un Été" and Orson Welles's landmark faux-documentary "F for Fake" (both seem to be influential here), somewhere along the way, we become mind- boggled: is that a "real life" woman or an actress? Who's the real "owner" of that life story? What is more important, to believe in the story or in the person who's telling it? Does the fact of suddenly realizing someone is acting out (and fooling us) prevent us from being moved by that story? Why do we take for granted that certain "formats" present the truth, like documentaries and one-on-one interviews?By the end of "Jogo de Cena" (the title aptly refers to the theatrical world of make believe, and it's not by chance the single set is an empty stage), we realize -- with a smile -- that we've been had, and, though the film is strictly realistic in its visual style, it's a journey that can be as rich and fun as letting your mind be bent by a Cortázar story, a Robbe-Grillet novella, a Buñuel film or an Escher drawing."Jogo de Cena" comes out in the same year as remarkable Brazilian films like "Proibido Proibir", "Santiago", "O Ano em que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias", "Mutum", "Cidade dos Homens", "Saneamento Básico"; controversial ones like "Baixio das Bestas", "Cão sem Dono", "Estômago", "O Cheiro do Ralo", besides the box-office bulldozer (and winner of the Berlin Golden Bear) "Tropa de Elite". In the future, 2007 will have to be remembered as a very special year for Brazilian cinema.

... more
sltfilho
2007/11/15

After an ad placed on the newspaper, Eduardo Coutinho, the director, listens to stories of ordinary women. Actresses play the same stories, alternatively.With a simple premise, the public is invited to see more than meets the eye. The real-life women shows us such a richness of detalis, strong personalities and delicate ways of perceiving the world. The actresses find difficulty on containing the emotions that the real character didn't even show on the speech. And suddenly the audience is challenged to figure out what is reality and what is interpretation on a thin line between life and art - as no other work is usually able to show us. When comparing real life and interpretation, we come to our senses that everything is, indeed, interpretation. No matter if as past experiences or a script offered by the director, emotions are always emotions and we find ourselves flowing on the realms of speech.A surprising masterpiece on both art and life, that amazes, moves and puzzles us. Coutinho again shows us that a simple idea is able to bring us deep experiences - especially with the unseen beauty there is right in front of us.

... more