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Maria Bethania: Music Is Perfume
Film Review by Kam Williams
Uncritical Bio-Pic Takes Loving Look at Musical Career of Legendary
Brazilian Singer
Maria Bethania is a legendary Brazilian singer whose siren call has
stirred the souls of her fellow countrymen for decades. Now in her
sixties, the gracefully-aging diva proves here that she is still capable
of delivering a ballad in heartrending fashion. The performance-driven
picture features plenty of concert footage, offset by interviews with
friends, family (including her brother, renowned composer Caetano Veloso)
and Maria herself.
The full-throated contralto's career began in 1964 and has endured
long enough for her to release 30 albums thusfar. The movie amounts to
the cinematic equivalent of a fanzine, a delightfully melodic montage
during which Maria meanders through many classic hits from her extensive
repertoire.
Offstage, Maria is at her best while sharing her feelings about her
music, such as when she describes samba as "sadness dancing. That is the
very essence of samba." Equally evocative are the moments when she talks
about the genre's history, describing it as "a black people's lament."
Acknowledging a debt owed to African slaves, she goes on to say that "We
were colonized by the Portuguese, but our heritage, the richness of our
music, is black."
And to think I always blamed it on the bossa nova.
Very Good (3 stars)
Unrated
In Portuguese with subtitles.
Running time: 82 minutes
Studio: ArtMattan Productions
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Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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