Acidente Brazilian Film Review

The Brazilian film Acidente, or Accident, is an Experimental Documentary and Travelogue that punctuates the hardships, frustrations, and emptiness of a depraved, poverty-stricken society.

The film concentrates on twenty cities in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. As the Filmmakers weave their way through each of the locations they construct a literary and visual poem using the city names; capturing snapshots of life meant to represent the plight of the lower-class.

Minimalistic, experimental, and avant garde are three words that sum up Cao Guimarães and Pablo Lobato's Documentary Acidente. Unfortunately those descriptions are only a few of the underlying reasons that make this feature-length attempt at visual poetry a cinematic flop.

The main problem with the fragmented Foreign made Documentary is a severe lack of production value and ultimately poor filmmaking. The film has no structure and wanders about using nothing but the poem constructed of city names to guide it. The cinematography is composed of a jarring mix of film and video footage that tries too hard to be the epitome of visualism. However, the filmmakers substitute the idea of artsy with shaky, under-exposed, obscure, and down right unidentifiable at times. If that weren't enough, the editing lacks motivation and purpose; holding on takes too long and failing to organize images in a coherent way that develops meaning and flow. The soundtrack is an utter disaster that capitalizes on atrocious audio sweetening and lousy music to create mood and interject tone.

It was clearly an accident that Acidente made it past the censors at the prestigious independent film festival. The result is a poorly made Documentary that fails to coherently represent the theme and the lavish Brazilian state it is meant to represent.