Amazon.com video review:
In the opening scenes of Central Station, colorful crowds of
Brazilians stream
into and out of a Rio de Janeiro train, pushing through doors and windows.
You're immediately pulled into the brutal vitality of a nation in motion,
setting the tone for a picturesque road movie that charts Brazil's
renaissance in a little boy's search for his father and an old woman's
emotional reawakening. When we first meet Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), this
frozen-hearted, sour-faced woman is the epitome of immobility: day after
day,
she sits in the train station selling her letter-writing skills to all
comers, but often doesn't bother to mail these precious messages. When a
woman who's paid Dora to write a pleading note to her son's long-missing
dad
gets run over by a bus, the child, Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), is up for
grabs. (The summary execution of a thieving street kid--in
longshot--underscores the seriousness of this waif's plight.) After an
abortive attempt to sell Josue for a new TV, the aspiring couch potato
finds
herself reluctantly propelled into an occasionally Fellini-esque odyssey
through the hinterlands of Brazil's sertäo, where Dora and her
sidekick find
unexpected faith and family. Former documentary filmmaker Walter Salles
(Foreign Land) mixes magic with realism in his appreciation of striking
faces
and places, but Central Station is primarily fueled by the
tough/tender
performances of Montenegro, Brazil's Judy Dench, and de Oliveira, an
airport
shoeshine boy Salles cast over 1,500 other hopefuls. (Montenegro was
nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, and Central Station was in the
running for
Best Foreign Language Film.) No cloyingly cute child-star, de Oliveira
plays
Josue as a bracingly idiosyncratic brat. And watching Dora's face and soul
slowly, unwillingly unclench as she gets back in motion--and emotion--is
potent pleasure, even if Salles's trip does dead-end in soap opera as his
Brazilian pilgrim's progress winds down. --Kathleen Murphy
