Oriundi
Brazilian director Ricardo Bravo has fashioned a rare kind of film, a heart-tugger that completely immerses the viewer and moves you to tears. ORIUNDI is an utterly charming love story that is funny, poignant and tragic at the same time. The film is also marked by strong familial undercurrents that are handled with extraordinary delicacy and never feel contrived.
Anthony Quinn gives a brilliant performance as a 93-year-old patriarch Giuseppe Padovani, and Italian immigrant, who, nearing the end of his life, suddenly finds himself longing for his one true love, Caterina, the woman he married and then suddenly lost in a tragic airplane accident more than 60 years ago. When Caterina suddenly and inexplicably appears to him in the guise of a beautiful young relative, Sofia D'Angelo (Leticia Spiller), Giuseppe begins to question both his reality and his sanity.
As he ponders the existence of his wife in reincarnated form, we get a glimpse of Giuseppe's world, a life that is delicately and intricately interwoven with those around him. It is a reality that is tenuous at best, because Giuseppe can do nothing to halt the deterioration of his family. Giuseppe's grandson Renato (Paulo Betti), a gourmet chef who has been entrusted with taking care of the pasta factory that Giuseppe and Caterina began, is forced to sell the family business in order to avoid bankruptcy. When Renato's son, Stefano (Tiago Real) comes home from business school full of grand ideas for saving the business, Renato dismisses him without a thought. For Renato, the painful decision to sell the business to a group of businessmen has been made at a huge price - the loss of respect from his family.
When Giuseppe begins to seriously believe that the beautiful Sofia is indeed Caterina reincarnated, he turns to his life-long friend and physician Dr. Enzo (Paulo Autran) for advice. His friend, however, can only offer philosophical platitudes with no assurances that he is not getting senile.
Faced with the impending sale of the family business, his own failing health and the unhappiness he sees in those around him, Giuseppe seems only to watch and wait in silent reflection and frustration as his world crumbles. Is this the reason Caterina has returned to him after so many years? Has she come to help him save those he loves? Is she the key to the family's happiness and their only hope for survival?
Award-winning screenwriter Marcos Bernstein (Central Station and Terra Estrangeira) has fashioned a heartwarming and touching screenplay that is filled with love, courage and sacrifice. It is a film that awakens in us the most basic of our emotions, even as it echoes the importance of preservation of family -- often at the expense of our past. This life-affirming drama is full of rich tradition and human tragedy.
ORIUNDI was filmed entirely on location in the picturesque city of Curitiba, a city of immigrants in the south of Brazil. Like the city itself, ORIUNDI is a film that not only celebrates the passion of its cultural history and the immigrant people who came from distant shores to make a better life, but it is also mindful of the future and its destiny.
ORIUNDI is a love story that finds beauty and passion even in suffering -- a small miracle in itself.
Produced by Laz Audiovisual Ltda., ORIUNDI runs 97 minutes.
romantic, horror