Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Niv_Savariego If you get a chance, go see this film. A very moving, highly emotional experience. It revolves around questions of motherhood, the loss of young children and, what seems like the exact opposite - unexpected pregnancies. The director seems to have found a way to reflect on the subject through actresses assuming the roles of mothers and daughters. We get to see some live interviews and some live acting, often the live acting breaks up and turns into an interview. The director messes with our expectations (trying to figure out which one is which, who is "real" - an actress explains why using tears as a sign of authenticity will not work), but that's not the main thrust of the film. Reality does play a part in the movie, but not the one you expect (the actresses' role, in fact, seems just as "real" as any other). Being a mother, acting, being a daughter, it all seems interconnected, it flows into one another. One of the women interviewed is called "Aleta", from the Greek "Alethia" - unveiled truth. The director doesn't miss the connection, and asks the actress playing that woman if she is "having trouble with the part of Aleta".What is interesting, and forms perhaps a third movement inside the film is the role of dreams. Many significant events recounted in the interviews happened in dreams. Dreams that seem to have changed reality forever. As an axis for the entire film, we get to see one brief interview, dreamy, almost hallucinatory, the only one to be shown to us without the "real" counterpart. This woman had sex only once, gave birth accidentally to a daughter, gave her away, and loves her with all her heart. Her story, just like the double voiced song at the end, perhaps even the film itself, feels both comical and tragic at same time.

debblyst Just when Eduardo Coutinho's (semi)documentaries seemed to have become uncomfortably predictable -- when his personalist, inquisitive, biased, "screw-impartiality" style seemed to take over whatever reality he was investigating at the time -- "Jogo de Cena" arrives to show us that, at 74, he has found extra breath and is at the top of his game. I have little to add to blur4fun spot-on comment here, except to say this is one of the wittiest formalist exercises on film structure in recent memory. It proves that imagination and intelligence can make seemingly ordinary material -- life stories told (or enacted) by women who may or may not be actresses -- rise to puzzling metalinguistic heights when cleverly rearranged and interconnected. It's also a well-humored investigation about the elastic boundaries of the eternal "truth or artifice" issue in the documentary form.At first, what we see on the screen seems to belong to daytime TV slice-of-life talk-shows: people spilling out their personal dramas and tragedies. But, as in Jean Rouch's partly fake "Chronique d'un Été" and Orson Welles's landmark faux-documentary "F for Fake" (both seem to be influential here), somewhere along the way, we become mind- boggled: is that a "real life" woman or an actress? Who's the real "owner" of that life story? What is more important, to believe in the story or in the person who's telling it? Does the fact of suddenly realizing someone is acting out (and fooling us) prevent us from being moved by that story? Why do we take for granted that certain "formats" present the truth, like documentaries and one-on-one interviews?By the end of "Jogo de Cena" (the title aptly refers to the theatrical world of make believe, and it's not by chance the single set is an empty stage), we realize -- with a smile -- that we've been had, and, though the film is strictly realistic in its visual style, it's a journey that can be as rich and fun as letting your mind be bent by a Cortázar story, a Robbe-Grillet novella, a Buñuel film or an Escher drawing."Jogo de Cena" comes out in the same year as remarkable Brazilian films like "Proibido Proibir", "Santiago", "O Ano em que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias", "Mutum", "Cidade dos Homens", "Saneamento Básico"; controversial ones like "Baixio das Bestas", "Cão sem Dono", "Estômago", "O Cheiro do Ralo", besides the box-office bulldozer (and winner of the Berlin Golden Bear) "Tropa de Elite". In the future, 2007 will have to be remembered as a very special year for Brazilian cinema.

sltfilho After an ad placed on the newspaper, Eduardo Coutinho, the director, listens to stories of ordinary women. Actresses play the same stories, alternatively.With a simple premise, the public is invited to see more than meets the eye. The real-life women shows us such a richness of detalis, strong personalities and delicate ways of perceiving the world. The actresses find difficulty on containing the emotions that the real character didn't even show on the speech. And suddenly the audience is challenged to figure out what is reality and what is interpretation on a thin line between life and art - as no other work is usually able to show us. When comparing real life and interpretation, we come to our senses that everything is, indeed, interpretation. No matter if as past experiences or a script offered by the director, emotions are always emotions and we find ourselves flowing on the realms of speech.A surprising masterpiece on both art and life, that amazes, moves and puzzles us. Coutinho again shows us that a simple idea is able to bring us deep experiences - especially with the unseen beauty there is right in front of us.