Review of Bela Donna

Very nice and underrated romantic drama, an adaptation of José Lins do Rêgo's novel Riacho Doce. Beautifully filmed, it shows gorgeous beaches and nature, a cute small town and lovelly old cars, besides quite hot sex scenes between Natasha Henstridge and Du Moscovis. Not all characters are equally developped, but all of them have their issues, even when appearing subtly, in the face expression of the actor or actress who plays a minor character. The II World War is a far away background that locates temporally the story, that could have happened at any time. The movie begins slightly sluggish, but it does improve and becones very engaging. It brings several issues such as infidelity, cultural differences, capitalist greed, new colonialism, mysticism mysoginy, racism and xenophoby, nazism and anti-semitism, abuse of power, many frustrated love interests, simple traditional life, the fetish for emigrating to the big city. A Brazil/USA production, it is spoken both in English and Portuguese, curiously more in the former language tha nin the later, although having just three actors who are not Brazilian.