MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Pixote’: Youth on Brazil’s Mean Streets

Anyone who looks at a newspaper or strolls by a TV set knows how dangerous life can be for inner-city children. Random violence and poverty make for a tough, resourceful adversary.

With all the reports on drive-by shootings and economic helplessness in South-Central Los Angeles and elsewhere, we know it’s bad here in the States. And if we think about it, we know it’s bad, if not worse, in even poorer countries.

“Pixote,” the 1981 movie screening tonight as part of Cal State Fullerton’s fall film series, shows us what life can be like in Brazil. Director Hector Babenco’s film takes no prisoners; it’s brutal and painful and courts our revulsion.

There are few respites as Babenco follows the title character, a 10-year-old boy, through his days in a reformatory and later on the streets of Sao Paulo. Like its antecedents--most notably Bunuel’s “Los Olvidados” (1950) and Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” (1959)--”Pixote” informs in stark, honest ways.

The beginning tips us off that Babenco is tuned to realism. He opens “Pixote” by talking on camera about Brazil’s slums and the local ghetto children he picked to play his characters. Before the story starts, the lens lingers on Fernando Ramos da Silva, the boy who becomes Pixote, in front of his real home, a shack in a row of shacks.

The documentary tone than switches to docudrama. The violence borders on sensationalism, but Babenco avoids any unnecessary flourishes; even these scenes feel geared to creating a shroud of danger and vulnerability that puncture our notions of youthful purity.

After Pixote enters the reformatory, he sees another boy gang-raped by peers, none older than 17 (the scene is reminiscent of a formative episode in Edward James Olmos’ recent “American Me”). Pixote soon discovers that homosexuality and violence are fixtures, and the officials don’t seem to care.

When the police beat to death three of his friends during a robbery investigation, Pixote and a few other boys escape and try to survive on the streets. They turn to selling drugs and team up with a prostitute, Deborah, who helps them reach a new level of violence, with tragic consequences.

These last passages of “Pixote” are the most ironic. Pixote and his friends form a family of sorts with Deborah as a mother figure. They find a wholeness that is more sad because of the perversion of the circumstances. But even this measure of happiness is short-lived, which we discover in the final scenes.

“Pixote” is double-billed with “Blood of the Condor,” Jorge Sanjines’ controversial 1969 film examining Bolivia’s Quenchua Indians.

* Hector Babenco’s “Pixote” screens at 9 p.m. and Jorge Sanjines’ “Blood of the Condor” at 7 p.m. at CSUF’s University Center Titan Theatre, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-3501.

FILM SERIES

Schedule of CSUF movies:

Tonight: “Blood of the Condor” (1969), directed by Jorge Sanjines (7 p.m.); “Pixote” (1981), directed by Hector Babenco (9 p.m.)

Oct. 14: “Cover Up: Behind the Iran Contra Affair” (1988), directed by Barbara Trent (6 p.m.); “God’s Angry Man” (1980), directed by Werner Herzog (8:15 p.m.); “American Dream” (1989), directed by Barbara Kopple (9:30 p.m.)

Oct. 30: “Don’t Look Now” (1973), directed by Nicolas Roeg (7:30 p.m.); “Repulsion” (1965), directed by Roman Polanski (9:30 p.m.)

Nov. 11: “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991), directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski, (6:30 and 10 p.m.); “Persona” (1966), directed by Ingmar Bergman (8:15 p.m.)

Nov. 18: “Red River” (1948), directed by Howard Hawks (7 p.m.); “The Wild Bunch” (1969), directed by Sam Peckinpah (9:30 p.m.)

Dec. 2: “Edward II” (1992), directed by Derek Jarman (6:30 and 10 p.m.); “Mala Noche” (1986), directed by Gus Van Sant (8:15 p.m.)

All screenings will be in the University Center Titan Theatre on the campus at 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton. Free. (714) 773-3501.