There are whole pockets of history and culture which will never be remembered, dying out with the people who lived them. There are countless masterpieces of cinema, as well, which get lost to time for a variety of reasons if not diligently preserved. From censors and dictatorships to fires and the fundamental ravages of time, films frequently vanish with only a faint murmur of recollection. It’s hard to believe that this almost happened to the most successful Brazilian film of all time in its home country (up until 2010), as well as in America until 1998.
Nonetheless, Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands was a hard-to-find film until just recently, with this week’s release on Blu-ray and DVD from Film Movement. Between the behind-the-scenes featurette, a booklet and excellent essay, and a really great, incisive commentary track from director Bruno Barreta, the special features certainly provide cultural and aesthetic context for the film. However, it’s the film itself (and its restoration) which is important here.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
Sonia Braga Plays the Put-Upon Doña Flor
EmbrafilmeFilm Movement
The 1976 Brazilian film Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands follows the titular middle-class wife as she suffers through one marriage, becomes a widow, and then marries again. It’s a simple storyline, more interested in observational characterization and magical realism than telling a traditional dramatic narrative; nonetheless, the film’s massive success is a fascinating cultural signifier that points to another era of moviegoers and filmmakers.
Doña Flor is played by the wonderful Sônia Braga in what would become her international breakthrough; the next half a century would find her winning countless awards and nominations, and even in the twilight of her career, Braga was named by The New York Times as one of the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century. Flor is a bit of a tabula rasa throughout much of the film, a woman who teaches culinary classes (with some delicious-looking food that highlights Bahian cuisine) but is extensively defined by her relationship to her husband, the absolute scoundrel Vadinho, played with comic obnoxiousness by José Wilker.
Vadinho is an undoubtedly difficult and problematic character that gets to the heart of the film’s ambiguity half a century later. In the film, Vadinho is a sexist lothario, an addictive gambler, a destructive alcoholic, and a physically abusive, gaslighting husband. In short, he’s a disgusting, reprehensible creep who torments Flor throughout their marriage, and the film certainly recognizes this (“He was a gigolo, a bum, and a shameless drunkard […] A swindler, a penniless gambler, a cheap crook! A scoundrel!” one character says).
The Sexual Politics of Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands
At the same time, though, Vadinho is often painted heroically in relation to the proletariat and social outsiders; the sex workers, drunkards, gamblers, and street urchins almost idolize him as a truly transgressive libertine, a man who refuses to adhere to societal mores and bourgeois values. Even his victim, Flor, expresses immense passion for him and mourns his death with great emotion and longing despite being robbed, beaten, and cheated by him.
This variance lends itself to the unsettling ambivalence of the film, where it’s hard to tell if Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands is a comedic feminist critique of the acceptability of this behavior in a patriarchal culture, or if it was so massively popular partly because it glorified machismo and a malhandrino (a scumbag who is also appealing, akin to the American ‘bad boy’).
As Robert Kennedy writes for Cranes Are Flying, “While the film is a constant delight, the inherent patriarchal message, and sexist double standard, is that Vadinho, as a man, is free to carouse to his heart’s content, perhaps embodied by dictatorial regimes, while Flor, as a woman, may only imagine such sexual freedom, with her sensuality playing out in culinary expression.” There is, however, a feminist reading of the text which finds Flor liberated at its conclusion, quietly exploiting her exploiter for the one thing he gave her (a better understanding of her own sexuality) while also maintaining a bourgeois existence to keep up appearances.
It is this sexuality which helps make Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands an often radical film, especially in its final act. It’s fairly rare even today to see a female character learn about and enjoy her own sexuality, owning it without punishment, shame, or moralization, so to see it emerge out of a 1976 film (at least according to the gestalt of this exegesis) is often striking.
The Visual Beauty of Bruno Barreta’s Film
What’s also striking is, of course, the visual manifestation of this adaptation of Jorge Amado’s hit 1966 novel. Cinematographer Murilo Salles shoots on the glorious Kodak film stock, Eastman Color Negative 5254, which was only active for eight years but is still considered to be one of the best film types of all time; extremely flexible but also utterly distinct, Eastman 5254 was also used in The Godfather, Cabaret, Barry Lyndon, and McCabe and Mrs Miller, and was thus obviously good for period pieces. Salles often crowds the frame, packing in an exotic array of colors, bodies, and shapes in some exuberant scenes.
Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands takes place in the 1940s, something meticulously crafted through its imagery and production (which cost three times as much as the most expensive Brazilian film up to that point). All the period costumes from Anisio Medeiros were handmade, and his art direction perfectly captures the multiple environments of the film — Carnaval, a swanky casino and brothel, a small town, a poverty-stricken ghetto. The backdrop for it all is Pelourinho (or the Historic Center) in Salvador, Bahia in the north of Brazil, and its gorgeous color palette and colonial architecture contributes to the self-contained atmosphere of the film.
Like Amarcord or The Hand of God, the movie creates a whole lived-in world; as Mary Jane Marcasiano writes in her essay for the Blu-ray release, “Certain films have the power to transport an audience, enticing us to leave the theater and book the next flight to its desirable location.” Between the cinematography, setting, and intricate attention to detail, Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands expertly captures a mood and a place, even if the characters can verge from fascinating to frustrating.
Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands Documents Brazilian Politics
The setting and sexual politics of the film also mirror the actual politics of Brazil and the divisions of the 1930s and ’40s. Like two husbands, Brazil was divided between different factions, with one dying out and another coming in, only for the past to return with a vengeance. The First Revolution of 1930, the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, the Communist Uprising of 1935, the Estado Novo dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas — all of Brazil’s chaotic oscillations and conflicts are allegorized in the erotic, fantasmatic sex romp that is Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands.
Of course, this is informed by (and informs) the time period of the film’s production, the 1970s, when the military dictatorship began to wane thanks to João Figueiredo and the abertura (the gradual democratization of Brazil). Prior to this film, brutal right-wing coups had cracked down on a lot of Brazilian art, effectively sending filmmakers from the Cinema Novo movement into exile. But while the government still lightly censored the film prints (but thankfully not the negative, resulting in this reissued Director’s Cut), Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands, capitalized on the loosening of restrictions in the country as the slow process of abertura took hold.
Along with being a political allegory, the film can also be viewed as an important “meditation on mesticagem in Brazil,” as Marshall Eakin writes for The American Historical Association. As Eakin writes, “In 20th-century Brazil, the most important national myth, what the anthropologist Roberto DaMatta has called the ‘fábula das três raças’ (the tale of the three races), has been Gilberto Freyre’s exuberant and optimistic vision of mestiçagem — that all Brazilians share a history of racial and cultural mixing of Native Americans, Africans, and Europeans.”
While the idea was later criticized, Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands captures the intersection of major differences in the Brazilian identity — from Catholicism to African spiritualism, the middle-class bourgeois to the struggling proletariat, right-wing ideology to Communist politics, light-skinned culture and dark-skinned culture (Braga even darkened her skin through tanning and make-up).
On top of all this is the Brazilian music of Chico Buarque and Francis Hime, whose original score captured the Tropicalia of the time. Their light and airy music coupled with the Bahian setting and sensuous imagery (almost perfectly restored in 4k), laced between political and cultural ideas and a sly performance from one of the country’s greatest actors, makes Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands an essential document of Brazilian cinema, and this new Blu-ray reissue (produced by David Wilentz) a treat for cinephiles. The film is also available on Digital to rent or own.
