Casa De Areia
(House Of Sand)
Spoiler-Free Movie Review
Upon hearing of a movie shot entirely in a vast expanse of desolate sand, one might be inclined to expect a dull landscape that keeps a low profile behind the action that’s happening onscreen. In Casa de Areia, however, understated scenery is nowhere to be found, because the aforementioned expanse of desolate sand is located in Brazil’s Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, where it’s always a Kodak moment.
It would not be unreasonable to suggest that the landscape is one of the lead actors in the movie, being that it plays an important role in the film, and it gets about as much screen time as any of the human actors. An inquiry regarding its availability to work on a film in Toronto next June has received no response, so perhaps Lençóis Maranhenses does not take its acting career seriously, or maybe it is holding out for another lead role, too much the prima donna to lower itself to character acting.
Speaking of actors, pay close attention to the shell game that is played with the female characters and the actresses who portray them, otherwise you might lose track of who is who. Never mind the fact that two of the actresses, who share roles, do not share much resemblance to one another. That is surely just a tribute to Luis Buñuel, or Todd Solondz, or someone. Yes, that must be it… a tribute… to someone.
Viewers who are able to appreciate, or at least tolerate, the actress/role switcheroo, have an opportunity to enjoy a compelling variant of the “stranded on a desert island” story, with an abundance of cruelty and kindness, love and loss, family and community, hope and despair. But that’s not all. There is also suspenseful uncertainty, ever-present risk of death, and on a good day, table salt for fancy dinners like mom used to make before someone had the bright idea to move to a sand pit in the middle of nowhere.
While Casa de Areia does not break much new ground in terms of story telling, it doesn’t come off as trite, and it does add some of its own ideas into the mix, so it is more than just a retelling of a familiar tale. It’s not like they simply moved Gilligan’s Island to Brazil. Add to that a litany of images likely to send people scrambling to their favorite travel planning web sites, credit cards in hand, and you’ve got a pretty darn good movie to watch after the kids are asleep.
