Back to the boys in Brazil

As “City of Men” opens, a posse of heavily armed gang members strolls down to the beach at Rio de Janeiro on a steamy summer day. Gun-toting bodyguards keep watch from the cliffs and rooftops above, and there’s an ugly hint of violence in the air. But then the focus shifts: Two teenage boys, one of them a father with a toddler in tow, follow the gang to the shore. They casually leave the scene -- forgetting the little boy with a pacifier in the surf. Later, when they realize their mistake and race back, the child is gone.

“City of God,” the acclaimed 2002 film from co-directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund about feuding drug lords in the city’s sprawling hillside slums, told a story of senseless violence and a fight for survival. But “City of Men,” directed by Paulo Morelli, probes the lives of ordinary people in these same communities. And it offers a cautionary tale about responsibility and parenting: Most of the young males in the film have grown up without fathers, and they repeat the same dysfunctional cycle, siring children whom they promptly ignore. Until they take responsibility for their adult lives and begin to repair their shattered families, the movie suggests, there is no hope for them.

It’s a powerful theme, yet Morelli concedes he took a risk with it. “City of God” was a box-office surprise, grossing $7.5 million in the U.S; it was also a critical hit, blazing a new trail in Brazilian cinema and earning four Oscar nominations. Now, as Morelli turns his own gaze to Rio’s favelas -- the crime-ridden slums housing millions -- the director is taking a chance that viewers may dismiss his latest movie as a sequel. Indeed, it was produced by Meirelles, and many of the actors in the first film appear in the second.

In the brutally competitive world of foreign films, where movies fight for limited space in art houses, sequels are almost unheard of. It’s also highly unusual to distribute a foreign film based on a TV series that was largely unseen outside its native country. “City of Men” grew out of a four-season Brazilian TV show with the same name that aired after “City of God,” and it’s an open question whether the new story -- immensely popular with home-grown audiences -- will resonate as much in the U.S. (The TV show, produced by Globo Filmes, chronicled the lives of two young boys growing up in the slums; the new film begins as they turn 18.)

“These are the risks we took,” Morelli said calmly, sitting at an empty conference table in Manhattan’s Regency Hotel. “ ‘City of God’ was maybe the best Brazilian film in decades, and I knew comparison with our new film would be inevitable. I would suffer with this comparison, of course. But I am very proud of what we’ve done.” A trim, elegant man with snowy-white hair, Morelli leaned forward: “What people will see is that we didn’t make a sequel,” he said. “We created something independent, a film that can stand on its own. It grew out of a whole world that began when the first film was made. And we’ve broken new ground.”

In some ways, the films are opposites. While “City of God” was bleak and unsparing, “City of Men” offers a ray of hope that Brazil’s beleaguered underclass may find a brighter future. But the movies also have much in common: Beyond sharing members of the same creative team, both were shot with hand-held cameras and move at a breathtaking pace. Both tell fictional stories based on true-life tales in a stark, verite documentary style, and they feature large ensembles of young, unknown actors who came from the favelas themselves. Both rely on heavily improvised dialogue and were shot entirely on location.

Is there a shared creative vision, then, between Meirelles and Morelli, a thread linking the films? The men were born in Sao Paulo, into middle-class homes, far from Rio’s teeming slums. In a phone interview, Meirelles said they shared the same goal -- to document a hidden world. “We had stories to tell,” he said. “But they weren’t all the same.”

After “City of God” became an international hit, Meirelles went on to direct other, more commercial films, most notably “The Constant Gardener.” But he jumped at the offer by one of Brazil’s largest film production companies to create a TV series growing out of his earlier film.

The resulting four-season show -- “City of Men” -- took a harsh look at crime and violence. But it also had the freedom to be darkly comedic, even warm-hearted. The episodes focused on teenagers Ace and Wallace, and their wry, coming-of-age adventures prompted a Los Angeles Times critic to describe the show as “a Brazilian ‘Wonder Years.’ With some guns.”

There were many creative visions in play, because the show relied on the work of nine directors. One of them was Morelli, who had collaborated in the past with Meirelles. As the second season began, the men explored the idea of extending the show into another film.

“We realized we had something interesting on our hands, and at that point we began planning the whole future of the project,” Morelli said. “We decided to do two more seasons on television and then a feature film to conclude the project. And I planned this with Fernando, we discussed this, we said, ‘Let’s make something completely different.’ ”

A turning point came when Morelli suggested that Ace (played by Douglas Silva in the TV show and film) unexpectedly become a teenage father. Fatherhood in the favelas -- or lack of it -- was a logical theme, Morelli thought, and he built on it as the series moved toward its conclusion. “This is a huge problem in that world, but few people talk about it,” the director said. “My country doesn’t really focus on the issue. It’s ignored. So we decided to put it on the table.”

All grown up

THE film version of “City of Men” picks up Ace and Wallace’s stories as they are about to turn 18. Ace wrestles with guilt and anxiety over raising his toddler when his wife leaves town for a better job. Meanwhile, Wallace (Darlan Cunha) embarks on a search for his father, whom he never knew, and confronts painful discoveries.

Eager to capture the flavor of this world, Morelli recruited young actors from the hillside slums. What they lacked in classical training they more than made up for in realism and intuitive dialogue. Although the director wrote a screenplay, his actors never saw it. Instead, they relied on extensive rehearsals and give-and-take during each scene.

In some cases, the actors’ real-life stories came to mirror the complicated, dysfunctional characters they played on screen. Today, for example, Silva, now 20, “wants to get married and build a family in real life,” Morelli said. “Both actors changed during the film. Neither one had ever met their fathers. But they’re growing. They want to become more responsible people.”

Others remain unchanged. Meirelles described one actor from “City of God” who at 16 had already begun siring children with neighborhood girls. Five years later, he was the father of five, with whom he rarely spent time. “I told him, ‘You’re a crazy guy,’ ” Meirelles joked. “I told him: ‘You have to be castrated! This is not a game!’ But he doesn’t think it’s crazy.”

Morelli and Meirelles have embarked on new projects but remain open to the idea of revisiting the favelas in a future film. Ideally, they’d follow Ace and Wallace into their late 20s and also tell the story about the little boy who survived his abandonment in the surf.

“It would be the story of Brazil, and all of these people,” said Morelli. “But I can’t see any great expectations or future for them. Maybe there’s a slim hope. A very slim hope.”

--

josh.getlin@latimes.com