Edgar Soberon Torchia There may be two reasons why Luiz Fernando Carvalho was all over "LavourArcaica" to the point of exhaustion: he wanted to cover all bases to make sure his full vision would reach the screen, or he is a megalomaniac who has to put his signature in every aspect of the filmmaking process and only trust a few to share his view. I find this work good in sections, but even within these, not everything functions well all the time. Even if he did not have a shooting script as it has been told, but worked the novel as a succession of "reactions", his film is terribly verbose. Walter Carvalho's cinematography is fine, but repetitive, with multiple tracking shots of furniture, floors, nature, or distortions, when not trying to be simply "pretty"; and Selton Mello, while a fine actor, sometimes shouts as if he were performing on a Greek amphitheater for a distant audience. Simone Spoladore is beautiful but silent all through the film, until a late explosion which brings tragic consequences. The father is another wordy figure, while the rest of the family cries, and cries, and cries. A pity Carvalho (whose only feature film this is, while being a full time director of soap operas) did not adapt literature to moving images (this is not, by any means, the case), and leave the editing to someone else who could have reduced all those long tracking shots into reasonable length. Sex had never been so unexciting; while incest (a common practice all over the world, that may cause misery in someone's life or not) is glorified. In any case, watch its almost three hours if you believe in prizes... and this one has won dozens of them.

rui_catarino This is, without a doubt, one of the best movies I have ever seen. It is a spectacular example of the new brazillian movie-making!It is a technically perfect movie, with a brilliant cinematography and a masterful photography. The scenes are very well built and the director truly owns this movie. Of course, it derives from one of the masterpieces of recent literature, Raduan Nassar's impressive novel.I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and have to disagree with Flavio Velames comment, complaining about it being too erudite. There's only such thing if a movie is pretensious, which is obviously not the case: this movie breathes honesty. There are already enough "common" movies being produced around the world to commit the crime of discarding this one for not being "common". Not all movies are supposed to be for the audience to have "fun". Some of them (the best ones) are supposed to enchant you, as this one does.Keep up the extraordinary work, Luiz Fernando Carvalho! I had the opportunity of attending the screening of this movie at the Film Festival Rotterdam 2002, where Luiz Fernando spoke. Enlightening. True art and true artist. Thank you.

Flavio Velame The idea of the movie was great, but the dialogues and scenes were made not for the cinema, but for theater. Then, it becomes a little too hard to watch, and the language is too erudite. This way, it didn't look like conventional. It is almost impossible to say that you had fun with this movie. Most of the scenes you want to close your eyes and wait until it passes. Selton Mello brights, as usual. But maybe with a more common movie, more people would go to the cinema and watch it, not to say that "I am very intelligent, I watched Lavoura Arcaica". Maybe it is too fair from most of the Brazilian's reality.

Jose Guilherme I would have given it a better score if it werent so slow and tedious... I think portuguese speakers will appreciate it much more than others will since the strongest aspect are the words and poetic style of the film. Photography is great too. A quicker more dynamic pace and we would have had a oscar winner here.