Lower City (2006)

""...a triangular tangle of sex, love, jealousy..."  Entertainment Weekly
""Earthy, erotic and in-your-face..."  Sight and Sound
""Boasting raw, handheld camerawork and bathed in sultry golden hues..."  Total Film

Editor's Note Steamy sex, glistening sweat, dark photography, grungy ghetto colors, and sudden violence pervade this Brazilian feature from director Sergio Machado. Alice Braga (CITY OF GOD) stars as Karinna, a traveling prostitute who trades her favors to lifelong friends Deco (Lazaro Ramos) and Naldinho (Wagner Moura) for a ride back to Salvador on their run down boat. After Deco is almost killed at a cockfight, the three form a temporary menage-a-trois friendship, but the intense love each man feels for Karinna coupled with their homophobic macho wariness threatens to destroy their once unbreakable friendship. The pair starts hanging out at the seedy strip club where she plies her trade, each trying to one up the other, raising money from a life of crime and crooked boxing matches respectively. Machado culls a lot of sweaty atmosphere from his locations and a grimy cast of authentic locals as extras. The three leads ably convey the passion and pain of living in itinerant, eternal adolescence, lost in a glowing fog of cigarette smoke, sex, sweat, and neon, struggling towards some sort of stability in the haze. A big Cannes favorite, the film should please fans of sexy art-house hits like Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN and AMORES PERROS.

	Alice Braga
	Jose Dumont
	Lazaro Ramos
	Wagner Moura
	Beto Villares - Original Music By
	Carlinhos Brown - Original Music By
	Isabella Monteiro - Editor
	Karim Ainouz, et. al. - Writer
	Mauricio Andrade Ramos - Executive Producer
	Robert Bevan - Producer
	Sergio Machado - Director
	Toca Seabra - Cinematographer
	"Karim Ainouz, et. al." - Writer

Sight and Sound
"Earthy, erotic and in-your-face....The pounding energy that cast and director pour into their work mark this out as a work of fresh new talent." 06/01/2006 p.89

Total Film
3 stars out of 5 -- "Boasting raw, handheld camerawork and bathed in sultry golden hues, it succeeds in challenging national taboos..." 07/01/2006 p.117

Entertainment Weekly
"[A] triangular tangle of sex, love, jealousy, brawling....[The director] lingers sensually over every wrong move his attractive tragic trio make." -- Grade: B 06/23/2006 p.52

Variety 9 of 10
"Set in the violent lower depths of Brazil's Salvador de Bahia, a hot love triangle between two poor friends and a young hooker becomes the excuse for an impressive stylistic exercise in ""Lower City."" Though the storyline is dirt simple (can friendship outlive jealousy?) and not particularly meaningful or involving, the action in this character-driven film is scintillatingly sexy. Distribs with an eye for the erotic end of art cinema should take a look...Cinematographer Toca Seabra's sweaty closeups and raw, hand-held camerawork charge the actors' bodies with sensuality." - Deborah Young

San Francisco Chronicle 7 of 10
"First-time feature film director Sergio Machado captures the seediness of their lives as Karinna becomes a stripper and hooker and Naldinho a petty thief. You can feel the honky-tonk atmosphere that permeates these river towns. A cockfight is especially vivid...the script, co-written by Machado and Karim Ainouz, is anemic. Situations quickly start to seem repetitive. It's hard to understand what Walter Salles, the director of ""The Motorcycle Diaries"" and ""Central Station,"" saw in the story that compelled him to produce ""Lower City."" With a distinct lack of action, Machado resorts to far too many close-ups of his stars until, as good-looking as they are, you tire of looking at them." - Ruthe Stein