Lance Maior

While traveling by train from Curitiba to his hometown Antonina, the lower middle class Mário (Reginaldo Faria) flirts with the store seller Neusa (Irene Stefânia). The handsome Mário is an ambitious college student and bank clerk that dates the shallow and wealthy Cristina (Regina Duarte) expecting to marry her to climb social position to the upper-class. Neusa dates the worker Rogério that is in unrequited love with her but she expects to marry Mário to improve her poor life. Along the days, Mário faces a movement of strike in the bank where he works while feels split between his contradictory feelings for Neusa and Cristina.

"Lance Maior" is the first feature of the Brazilian director and writer Sylvio Back and is visibly influenced by the Nouvelle Vague. The story about love, fight of classes and deception has a confused screenplay with use of ellipsis and poor development of characters and situations, but is absolutely original. The most important is the boldness of Sylvio Back in the historical moment of the Brazilian history when the themes fight of classes and strike were forbidden by the military dictatorship. The awesome beauty of Irene Stefânia is hypnotic and highlighted by the great black and white cinematography. Unfortunately the audio is terrible like in most of the Brazilian movies of this period and there are dialogs that are impossible to be heard. I have just watched this film on a rare VHS of my collection from the Cinemateca Sylvio Back and released by Apel Distributor. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Lance Maior" ("Higher Bid")