Reviews of AFI Festival Movies : TODAY

‘Leila Diniz’

Brazil, 1987, 100 minutes, 10:15 p.m . An ambitious attempt by film maker Luiz Carlos Lacerda to treat Diniz, the popular actress and cabaret star, as the brazen, uninhibited spirit of Brazil, deemed a threat by the military dictatorship. The film suggests that her censorship problems were smoothed over by a highly placed relative and that she had little concern for the fate of regime victims. The picture of her as a goddess is hard to swallow but still, it’s a swift, vivid and very sexy movie.