Greta (2019)

Directed by: Armando Praca | 97 minutes | drama | Actors: Marco Nanini, Denise Weinberg, Demick Lopes, Gretta Star

In the Brazilian ‘Greta’ we meet an unusual trio. Pedro is a 70-year-old gay nurse in a shabby hospital in Fortaleza. His best friend is the terminally ill transsexual Daniela. One day, the murder suspect Jean ends up injured in the hospital. Pedro decides to take in the (relatively) young killer and soon he tends to more than just Jean’s wounds.

‘Greta’ is a gay drama that raises two questions while watching. How can a one and a half hour film feel like a full working day? And how is it possible that a film with a terminal transsexual, an escaped murderer and a sexually twisted elderly person is so horribly boring?

The answer to both questions is that ‘Greta’ stands still on all fronts for an hour and a half. After the characters are introduced, nothing happens at all. In the absence of plot development, you can hope for character development or at least an interesting deepening of the characters. That doesn’t happen either.

What we mainly see are characters who look tormented, sigh deeply, sigh deeply, sigh again, and then take a drag on their cigarette. You see that kind of unfocused anguish more often in art house films, and you have to assume that it is some kind of existential soul pain. You can’t do much more with it. All we can glean from anything meaningful is Pedro’s repeated sigh that he wants to be left alone but at the same time craves love. Just like his great heroine Greta Garbo.

What we also see are fairly explicit sex scenes. They don’t add anything to plot or character development and they aren’t filmed in a very special way. We have to believe that Jean and Pedro have developed a deep bond thanks to sex, because they don’t really have any other kind of contact.

In the absence of plot or character development, ‘Greta’ now seems mainly a paean to ugliness. Characters, nightclub, hospital and interiors, everything passing by is equally unattractive and in an advanced stage of decay. Perhaps director/screenwriter Armando Praça intended that we should discover wisps of beauty in that ugliness. Or maybe he wanted us to sigh as angrily as his characters. In the latter respect, he has succeeded brilliantly.