Flânerie and Invasion in the Monstrous City: São Paulo in recent cinema

Abstract

Changes in the physical space of São Paulo are the focus of three films released early in the 21st century: O Príncipe (2002; The Prince), by Ugo Giorgetti; Urbânia (2001), by Flávio Frederico; and O Invasor (2002; The Trespasser), by Beto Brant. All three films convey a sense of deep division in the urban space by focusing on the “invasion” of certain parts of São Paulo by people who supposedly do not belong there: homeless, squatters, inhabitants of periferia. But they do so in different ways. The first two films play with the identification between viewers and the gaze of their flâneur-protagonists, creating, as a result, a shared feeling of nostalgia for a city that no longer exists. O Invasor, by contrast, uses camera work to de-stabilize the viewers' gaze, much complicating our attempts to identify with its protagonists and their ways of looking at the city. This paper will examine how gaze (camera gaze, characters' gaze, implied viewers' gaze) relates to issues of class difference and spatial division in the three films, paying most attention to O Invasor. By comparing this film to O Príncipe and Urbânia, it will re-assess the meanings of the invasion suggested in its title.

Notes

 1 For excellent analyses of these processes see Teresa Caldeira's City of Walls, and Ermínia Maricato's Metrópole na Periferia do Capitalismo. See also Sá's Life in the Megalopolis.

 2 Later, Baudelaire dismissed his own participation in the barricades of the 1848 Revolution as unimportant. For excellent analyses of Baudelaire's politics and of his participation in the 1858 Revolution see T. J. Clark's The Absolute Bourgeois and F. W. J. Hemming's Culture and Society in France, 1848-1898.

 3 Some feminist critics disagree. See, for instance, Wilson.

 4 In a certain way this was also, in part, the function of nineteenth-century Parisian arcades. See Buck-Morss. For malling in contemporary Latin America see Draper.

 5 Her theory generated ample debates in the decades that followed. See, for instance: Kaplan; Neale; and Bruno. For a good history of this debate see Manlove.

 6 For allegory and flânerie, particularly in Baudelaire, see Walter Benjamin's s Trauerspiel and ‘One Way Street’. See also Bolle, 134.

 7 Nevertheless the film was a box office failure.

 8 The film was produced in part with money from a German foundation and in part by the International festival in Rotterdam, and received public funds as well from the city of São Paulo.

 9 Including Luis Sérgio Person's São Paulo S/A; Walter Hugo Khouri's Noite Vazia; and Humberto Mauro's Ganga Bruta.

10 Ismail Xavier: talk at the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies, University of Manchester, 2008.

11 For an excellent discussion of realism in O Invasor, see Nagib. Against many critics that see O Invasor as a realist representation of contemporary Brazil, she reads it as an expressionist film, pointing to many stylistic features (including acting and lighting) that emphasize its departure from realist aesthetics.

12 This long sequence mentioned also helps to destabilize the position of the gaze in the film. It is reminiscent of video-clips partly because it is filmed to the rhythm of rapper Sabotage's song ‘Zona Sul.’ In other words, the words of the song (an insider's view of the bairro) appear to have narrative predominance over the camera gaze. The importance of the soundtracks in O Invasor deserves closer attention.