Emotions on a Grand Scale in the Universal World of ‘Station’

In Walter Salles’ “Central Station,” a film that is as beautiful as it is wrenching, the camera picks out a worn, unhappy-looking older woman who sets up a table and chair every day in Rio’s vast railroad terminus. She earns a pittance writing letters for the illiterate, whom she regards with a cold matter-of-fact disdain.

She is a retired schoolteacher who must augment her minuscule pension in this manner and takes scant pains to disguise her bitterness. Indeed, if she regards what is being dictated to her as rubbish she refuses to mail the completed letter entrusted to her by the customer. A drawer stuffed with such letters in a bureau in her tiny apartment attests to the magnitude of her disdain for her fellow human beings.

In short, Fernanda Montenegro’s Dora is a mean-spirited, dishonest, highly judgmental individual--the very last person with whom you would trust a child. Yet when a woman, one of Dora’s customers, is struck fatally by a car, Dora is the only person in all of Rio with whom the woman’s 10-year-old son Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira) has had any contact, even though fleeting.

You may want to resist this movie as much as Dora resists Josue. You may say to yourself, “Not yet another movie about an aging curmudgeon melted by an irresistible kid.” But that is to discount the profound scope and vision that Salles brings to his story. “Central Station” belongs to the grand humanist tradition of Italian neo-realism and has been made with the care and concern for values and emotions that have always characterized the films of its producer, five-time Oscar-winner Arthur Cohn. It is also to underestimate the power of Montenegro, widely regarded as Brazil’s greatest actress, and the remarkable natural acting ability of De Oliveira, who in fact was spotted by Salles at Rio’s airport, where he had been spending several hours a day shining shoes to help out his poor family.

The world of “Central Station” is all too universal--a place where older people, even those who’ve led responsible, respectable lives, are in effect discarded, left to fend for themselves, and a place where children are even more vulnerable at a time when families seem increasingly far-flung and fragmented. Indeed, a few deft plot developments propel Dora and Josue on a long railroad journey in search of the father he doesn’t even know. (It has been suggested that their journey represents on another level a kind of quest for a sense of Brazilian identity.)

Dora is actually capable of an evil and indifference that won’t be revealed here except to observe that the woman’s hatefulness gives Montenegro all the greater a range in which to depict with the utmost understatement her ever-so-gradual regeneration--not so much an awakening of maternal instincts but a warming to the simple contact with another human being. In her relationship with the resilient yet inescapably vulnerable Josue, Dora is moved to confront the painful losses that have left her so emotionally calcified.

(The only other role of substance goes to none other than Mariela Pera, unforgettable as the prostitute in “Pixote.” She plays Dora’s good-humored neighbor, whose sense of decency proves to be pivotal.)

“Central Station” becomes transcendent in its stunning, unexpected climactic sequence that attests to the formidability of Montenegro’s gifts as an actress. Her portrayal of Dora, one of the year’s finest performances, attests to a career spent bringing to life a large portion of the stage’s most challenging heroines. It also attests to Montenegro’s unfailing grasp of the fact that acting for the cinema--in which she has appeared only a handful of times--requires no less than revealing your soul. For Fernanda Montenegro, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Italy’s late Giulietta Masina (Federico Fellini’s wife and frequent star) in appearance and talent, “Central Station” is a personal triumph and a rich cinematic experience.

* MPAA rating: R, for language. Times guidelines: adult themes, too intense for the very young.

‘Central Station’ (‘Central do Brasil’)

Fernanda Montenegro: Dora

Mariela Pera: Irene

Vinicius de Oliveira: Josue

A Sony Pictures Classics release of an Arthur Cohn production in association with MACT Productions/Videofilms/Riofilme and Canal Plus. Director Walter Salles. Producers Arthur Cohn, Martine de Clermont-Tonnere. Executive producers Elisa Tolomelli, Lillian Birnbaum, Donald Ranvaud. Screenplay by Joao Emanuel Carneiro; based on an idea by Salles. Cinematographer Walter Carvalho. Costumes Cristina Camargo. Editors Isabelle Rathery, Felipe Lacerda. Music Antonio Pinto, Jacques Morelembaum. Production designers Cassio Amarante, Carla Caffe. Set designer Monica Costa. In Portuguese, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

At selected theaters.