How to Draw a Perfect Circle (2009) Reviews

• Dark obscure shots and thoughts

  dunyadoom2013-06-10

  Embroidered with dark shots this film portrays obscure thoughts of a mind in turmoil. The turmoil comes from the uncontrollable sexual desire for a sibling, that eats the protagonist in every scene. But the realization of the desire will not bring resolution to the heavy feeling of anguish. Throughout the whole film you cannot sense a ray of light coming, the film does not fool you. The dim lighting and poor colorless mise-en-scène personify the repressed drives of the human consciousness, or rather the unconscious. It is as if the protagonist is aware of the sickly nature of his desire, but also that it will only get worse if he tries to suppress them. His fight manifests itself in sometimes tiresome long gloomy shots. We see here a family that crosses the boundaries of normal, which is probably the case in almost every family, with the difference that this family is not trying to act like anything else. Everyone acts by their impulses, the mother goes out at night to party, walks around as if she were alone and freely as if she were seducing everyone around her. There is something used up about her, but also very sadistically attractive. The father is a free soul, a writer that cannot really live for anyone but himself, and even that barely. He enjoys random sex with hookers/strangers and will probably smoke himself to death. The sister seems to have turned out the most unburdened of them all, but due to the great love for her brother she is bound to fall under his burden of lust and unhealthy affection. It is in this air of free, but auto destructive and ill-fated desires, that the kid found himself growing up and that he absorbed. He is caught in a circle of reenacting these patterns and since there is nothing perfect in this life but the circle, he is most likely never to come out of it.

• Forbidden love

  valadas2012-06-14

  This movie moves itself in a difficult subject such as the teenagers' awakening for sexuality and which here involves even an incest which goes on being socially and according to the morals in force, a forbidden love. It succeeds however in presenting a story in which authenticity combines with a certain poetry. We have before us a family more or less dissolved such as it is commonplace in our current times. Divorced parents and two teenager children (Sofia and Guilherme) in the usual ping-pong between father and mother although there is no animosity between the latter. There is also a more or less bohemian grandmother who amuses herself playing poker with friends. In this uncertain and loose atmosphere that forbidden love between brother and sister springs up and after a few encounters and missings ends up in a climax which has the above mentioned authenticity and poetry and even some beauty although realistic in sexual terms. This is all told through suggestive images, short and simple dialogues and a serene but efficacious cut. The acting is reasonably good too. Not a masterpiece but just a good movie anyway