Quero (2007)

Directed by: Carlos Cortez | 88 minutes | drama | Actors: Maxwell Nascimento, Igor Maximilliano, Leandro Carvalho, Ângela Leal, Eduardo Chagas, Giulio Lopes, Milhem Cortaz, Nildo Ferreira, Ailton Graça, Cláudia Juliana, Sílvia Lourenço, Maria Luisa Mendonça, Eliseu Paranhos

The Brazilian ‘Querô’ is a hard film about the growing kid with the same (nick)name. From the very first scenes, under Querô’s own voice over, in which we see Querô being born in a brothel – his mother is a prostitute – it is clear that director Carlos Cortez does not protect his viewers: when we witness the The way Querô’s mother drinks herself to death and we finally look into her wide-open eyes after her death, you immediately feel that life is hard for those involved in this film.

Querô himself experiences this all too well, he grows up with Violeta, the brothel keeper who unceremoniously knocked his mother out just after his birth. The viewer gets nothing from his first years, in which he regularly has to deal with the fists of the aggressive Violeta, we meet the teenager for the first time when he and a few “friends” commit a robbery on a tourist . Apparently Querô’s first serious law violation, but it doesn’t do much for him yet. Neither does the fact that his buddy betrays him, at the police station he lies like he’s been doing nothing else all his life. And the sad thing is, that’s probably exactly where it went wrong; what a world for a child to grow up in.

Querô ends up in a juvenile detention center, where it is of course at least as unpleasant to stay as on the street. He is threatened with rape by fellow inmates, but still tries to defend himself heroically. “I’m a man!” he says proudly, as if that could save him. His fate seems inevitable and the events in the prison only fuel his hatred. The thing Querô wants when he gets out of prison is a gun of his own. Because the intense deep-seated hatred for everything that has ever happened to him is so convincingly presented, the viewer never has the idea that ‘Querô’ could end well. This means that watching the film is not a cheerful activity, but rather puts the viewer on the ground, with bare feet in a block of fast-hardening concrete.

The usually convincing acting of newcomer Maxwell Nascimento and the sure direction of Cortez, who is also making his debut, ensures that the viewer is drawn into the story and remains captivated. Sometimes Cortez seems to have preferred style over substance, so that leaps and bounds are made in the story; gaps that are not filled in later. That’s a shame, but it doesn’t diminish the involvement with the title hero: you would want to shout your advice at him, but nowhere does the distance between the audience and the sad character seem greater. ‘Querô’ is not unique, the interfaces with a topper like ‘Cidade de deus’ are too great for that, but they are impressive.