BLUE FOR DANGER: ‘EL BONAERENSE’ [6/10] and ‘BUS 174′ [7/10]

Published on: February 22nd, 2003

 

Two films – one fiction, the other documentary – highlighting the scandalous state of the police forces serving major South American metropolises. In El Bonaerense, small-town locksmith and occasional petty criminal Zapa (Jorge Roman) ends up, almost by accident, among the ranks of Buenos Aires notoriously incompetent boys-in-blue: the “bonaerense” of the untranslatable title (roughly, ‘Buenos’ Aires Finest’). Under-resourced, under-staffed, under-paid, under-trained and over-stretched, the B.A. cops are spectacularly ill-equipped to cope with the messy consequences of Argentina’s ongoing financial dire-straits.

While essentially an amiable, well-meaning sort, Zapa’s anything-for-an-easy-life attitude means he doesn’t turn a hair when exposed to the endemic corruption and sloppy management practices of his superiors. This allows him to rise without trace until, at the end of the film, he’s able to return home a decorated (and only slightly wounded) hero. Trapero films his own script with a dry, ironic detachment, paying a patient and detailed attention to Zapa’s surroundings in the sleepy country and grimy city. Despite mild comic touches – the cops’ training contains one or two Keystone moments, while Caneva (Anibal Barengo) makes the most of his minor role as a charismatic conspiracy-nut officer – there’s no mistaking Trapero’s savage disgust at the institutionalised incompetence of a self-serving organisation which seems to regard the public as an impediment to the conduct of their duties.

Though atmospheric and absorbing, El Bonaerense is ultimately rather more successful as a polemic than a drama. While Zapa’s facelessness and inconsequentiality are, of course, part of Trapero’s point, they also mean that the character never really comes into focus to the extent that he can sustain our interest over the course of a whole feature. An undeveloped romantic sub-plot doesn’t help matters, and the wry climax, though an unmistakable indictment of the bonaerense system, is rather too low-key.

Bus 174, by contrast, builds gradually throughout its (relatively) epic running-time to a starkly powerful conclusion. Though firmly focussed on Rio de Janeiro, the problems diagnosed in El Bonaerense apply no less strongly here – if anything, the Rio cops come across as even worse than their Argentine colleagues. Director Padilha takes one specific incident – the June, 2000 hi-jacking of a packed downtown bus in downtown Rio – as the starting-point for a wide-ranging investigation into the human-rights abuses perpetrated by the putative enforcers of law and order.

Making excellent use of the copious footage shot on the day by the city’s TV crews, and after-the-event interviews with the surviving participants, Padilha painstakingly reconstructs every detail of the four-hour stand-off between the police and the hijacker, a petty criminal called Sandro. As the emphasis gradually shifts to Sandro himself, we discover he harboured a grudge against life in general and the police in particular following the murder of many of his City of God-type street-kid friends by a death squad some months before in what was known as the Candelaria massacre. As the wider circles of guilt and blame are established, and Sandro’s actions are analysed and explained – but never condoned – he nevertheless emerges as the real victim of Bus 174, not least because of the very messy mis-handling of the affair by the bungling Rio cops.

Though mostly adhering closely to the conventional documentary format – alternating between raw footage and talking-head commentary, with much manipulative muzak tying it all together – this is a compelling tale told with objectivity and conviction. And there’s one terrific sequence, remarkable for its style as well as its content, when Padilha ventures into one of Brazil’s overcrowded jails and films the inmates, converting the image to negative to protect their identities as they rail against the injustices they have suffered — the invisible become visible and the silenced are, briefly, given a voice.

This is a tragic story, but it isn’t without humour as Sandro’s hostages recall staging many incidents for the benefit of the watching cameras. The whole affair will be unfamiliar to many viewers, so there’s real suspense in the latter stages as we wonder exactly how it’s all going to end. The answer, recounted in strikingly slowed-down video footage, is jarring, sobering, but not entirely unexpected – especially to anyone familiar with the techniques of the Rio force, or, indeed, their brothers-in-arms from El Bonaerense.

Neil Young
22nd February, 2003
(both seen 30th January, Rotterdam Film Festival: Bus 174 at Pathe Schouwburgplein; El Bonaerense at Rotterdamse Schouwburg)
For all the reviews from the 2003 Rotterdam Film Festival, click here.

EL BONAERENSE
6/10 : Argentina (Arg-Chile) 2002 : Pablo Trapero : 92mins

BUS 174
7/10 : Onibus 174 : Brazil 2002 : Jose Padilha : 133mins

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