nunajerbidnis Áurea married and entrusts her life, as well as her mother Maria's life, to a mad-man. He believes that he is going to farm the desert. He keeps her captive with insanity and constantly threatened brutality.A group of run-away slaves, living near by, have access to salt. Salt is more than the mad-man and his captive bride Áurea have. Salt brought-in to the slaves by a soul-less trader dominates the mad-man who has impregnated his wife just before he has a mantrum and accidentally kills himself ripping-down their drift-wood shack.The run-away slaves in this film are perfectly treacherous. They intentionally prevent the women--Mother Maria, Áurea and daughter Maria--their opportunity to escape that wasteland. They do not inform the women that the scientific expedition has arrived again.They keep mum for the purpose of holding power over the women. To keep them to themselves. To allow time and desolation to break their spirits.When Áurea finally decides that her life isn't worth spit and pretties-herself-up to become the whore of the head slave, her daughter Maria sees that the world she was born into is clearly an insane power-struggle. The total nowhere-ness of their life in the sand is pure depression without Prozac. Helplessness is a major theme.Then Áurea finally succumbs to Stockholm syndrome. She identifies with her slave captors, feels herself exiled to nothingness and gives-up. When, finally, an opportunity arrives to escape--she cannot leave.She stays, outlives the all male slaves, and ends-up 100% alone, isolated and has ended-up living a completely wasted life. Prisoners have more social contact, more things to do, better food, a chance of release and live happier more viable lives.I have never seen a sadder, more desolate, hopeless film.

poco loco Aurea (Fernanda Torres), heads with her visionary husband, her feeble mother and a few deluded colonists through sand dune after sand dune to some marshy land near the sea, hundreds of miles from civilization. Shortly after arriving, the rest of the colonists decide this was a bad idea and take off. Aurea's husband, angry at the quitters, tries to finish his hut himself and within minutes knocks some poles over on his head and dies. Now Aurea, several months pregnant, and her old mother are left pretty much to themselves in the absolute middle of nowhere. They find the remnants of a fugitive slave camp nearby and get a few meager supplies there. They plan on leaving, 10 years later, they are still planning on leaving. Aurea finally hooks up with one of the dudes from the colony and decides it isn't so bad. 20 more years pass, Aurea has transformed into her mother who died earlier in a sand accident and is now played by Fernanda Montenegro and Maria the daughter born in the desert in now played by Fernanda Torres. Maria is a carefree, lazy girl, drinking and hooking up with the local youth. But what can you expect when you live in the sand without civilization.This movie is like eating a picnic on the beach. You've got some egg salad sandwiches, some apple slices and some chocolate chip cookies, but as you eat, you notice a particular crunch. Yes, there is sand in the egg salad, yes there is sand on the apples, yes there is sand in the cookies. But it's not so bad, it's still pretty good. What's more there's sand in your ear and even in your butt crack (where there should never be sand). You have been invaded by sand, but what can you do but lay back and let it take over, it's part of the beach experience. 7/10http://blog.myspace.com/locoformovies

kingdio To say this movie is inert is much too great an understatement. It makes the dictionary look like an explosive dramatic novel. Critics would have you believe that great cinematography and scenery can substitute substance. Such a belief is akin to touting grass growing as breakthrough cinema just because it's being broadcasted in HD.The movie establishes from the beginning that the true star is the scenery. There are but a dozen words in the first 20 minutes of the film, a trend that continues throughout and grows weary if you can manage to stay up. The sound of the wind and crashing waves are terrific for putting you to sleep. But they hardly constitute a gripping drama.For reasons that are never explained, a very stubborn man takes his wife and her mother to what amount to a sand dune. What follows is a very long depiction of the most uninteresting lives in the entire continent of South America. If the premise is not absurd enough, we get treated to three generations of insignificant characters and a whole lot of desert nature. A desert that's much too kind in my opinion. A real desert would've killed the first generation in this boring movie and spared me 90 minutes of garbage.

D A From Brazil begins this unusual tale taking place in their early 20th century's untamed deserts, leading a distraught man, his wife, with family and following, to the absurd notion of settling into the middle of an elusive waterhole, centered in the middle of an endless sandscape, into one eventual House of Sand. What transpires from the mysterious setup of this piece is captured with quite dignity, accentuated with the production values that would have any techie humbled by the tough shoot this crew must have undergone to balance the artsy direction to the harsh environment. It is to the film's detriment then, that the vast majority of time is spent milking the unique aesthetics involved here, insensitively editing many of the beautifully photographed shots which adds up to a whole that unwittingly imitates it's protagonist's plight a little too closely- that of sinking into the ground of nothingness. Fortunately a cleverly conceived, though questionably rendered plot device snaps the viewer's interest back late in the game, even rounding out the mostly one trick affair on a profound note. This extra dimension carved out in the third act does save this House from blowing away for the artistic excuse a lot of it seems to be.