A curious and vaguely interesting mix between fiction and documentary where director Ana Carolina ("Das Tripas Coração") follows a female cinema
spectator (Stela Freitas) who's asked about her film interests, cinema routine, and on the latter portion of the film she's inside the dark theater
watching a series of films, all referenced through famous soundtrack bits (Hollywood flicks and Brazilian too), and all the emotions she feels each film goes
by, but at other times she's slightly bothered by the presence of men making passes at her.
"Anatomy of a Spectactor" also takes some time to expose about the difficulties faced by Brazilian cinema when it comes to attracting audiences to their
films, usually neglected as most audiences favor Hollywood blockbusters (back then, even serious award winning films had amazing box-office results). Mrs. Carolina
doesn't answer the problematic, a reality then and an even more hurtful reality now, specially for those - like me - who enjoy seeing what's new on terms of our own
cinema, when and where to see it (even internet platforms aren't so helpful as it could be).
The late Leon Hirszman dealt with the topic in another amazing short
film with plenty of statistics and interesting views were formed on that. I'm not sure if there's a thoughtful domestic solution to the scenario, but one thing that
works a little comes to a) bread and circus, give what people want - but that doesn't qualify necessarily in quality and box-office - yet important to know who is your audience; and b) make a significant and
wild investments on foreign market with quality films. Films like "Central do Brasil", "City of God" or the ones by Kléber Mendonça Filho, attracted a great deal
of views when it got international releases, awards nominations and that whole idea of audiences celebrating that this cinema can compete with the ones around
the world and we could be proud of that. Not guaranteed as well, but it works time and again, and it'll depend on a series of factors, producing companies and
a whole new look at how this industry works.
Without that discussion, seeing this short is a mere curious look where we can compare realities and situations related with consuming movies, books on the
topic and how everything changed in a drastic manner. Stela character looks for movies by reading French books she can't read properly and reading newspapers (who still
does that with internet and the actual cinema that you attend and make notes on upcoming attractions).
Since little images from movies are shown, the film projects
a series of theme songs from movies and whenever they're played it brought some emotions with it (from usual suspects as "Singin' in the Rain", "The Wizard of Oz" or
"La Strada", to Brazilian classics "O Ébrio" and "A Dama do Lotação"). Lovely moments of joy to the attentive film lovers out there who still enjoy the cinema experience. 7/10.
