Title: Sambo Infinito
Foreign Title:
Year: 2024
Country: Brazil/France
Language: In Portuguese with English subtitles
Director: Leonardo Martinelli
Rio’s carnival is a five night yearly festival; celebrating a time of magical fantasy played out by colourful and magnificent costumes, street dancing, samba parades and spontaneous street music. With a clever script, marvellous music and dancing the revellers and the audience enter a different world for the night.
One character, played by the talented musician Gilberto Gil (also past Minister of Culture) wistfully states “it is beautiful to see the city belong to the people at least once a year”. It is telling that the introductory scene is also the concluding scene and has a street cleaner, Angelo, straightening a sign on an angle to a tilted horizon. Angelo straightens out the horizon by adjusting the sign which moves like a rail lever which opens and closes tracks, guiding trains from one track to another.
The Director, Leonardo Martinelli skillfully takes advantage of this wonderful and joyful backdrop to tell the story of Angelo who is grieving the loss of his beloved sister and of his childhood memories of the two of them going to Carnival every year. Pensively, Angelo tells a fellow worker that it hurts to remember finitude.
As Angelo works through the night cleaning the streets with his team he wanders through his memories and dreams; revisiting his deceased sister and younger self at different ages. It is interesting that the age differences between the two change as his memories and fantasies work through the experience; spotlighting the non-linear and timeless nature of thoughts and memories. These differences emphasize the non-continuous nature of memory and the eternal sense of his love.
In the end Angelo’s grief comes to some resolution as he realises that love is not finite but infinite and his sister lives on in his heart.
