TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL, 3rd Day, Part 2


JEAN CHARLES, directed by Henrique Goldman
England/Brazil

Another earnest plea for justice from a higher profile incident than the previous day's Mexican film Backyard covered. After the Tube and bus bombings in London in 2005, police tracked and fatally shot a man they suspected of being a terrorist involved in the plot. After a brief investigation, police admitted that the man turned out to be completely unrelated to the incidents. He was a Brazilian immigrant, Jean Charles de Menezes, stalked by police because they felt he "looked like a Muslim." Police had found a backpack at the site of a failed bombing that same day which contained an address; the address was of an apartment house in which Jean Charles also had an apartment. This flimsy piece of "evidence" is revealed not in the film itself, but in a postscript just before the credits roll.

The film is shown principally from the point of view of Jean Charles, so the police suspicions, their "evidence," and any discussions they may have had are never shown in the main body of the film, just the fatal showdown. What emerges from that style is three quarters of a film that is a loosely structured portrait of Brazilians in London -- their culture, their home life, and their nightlife. It's informative, another window that the Toronto festival provides into an overlooked subculture. And it creates in the viewer the same sense of shock and puzzlement that hit the Brazilians around Jean Charles.

After that, the last quarter of the film becomes an angry denunciation of injustice, government unresponsiveness and the frustrating failure of the Brazilian community in London to obtain any satisfaction from the government. While this last quarter of the film has a sharper focus, it is very angry in its performances and its trajectory. That confers a certain power, but it doesn't drive its point home is effectively as a more tightly structured film might have.

An important message and a noble effort. I rate it a B.