Desculpe o Transtorno (2016) Reviews

• Mildly entertaining romantic comedy

  hugoimdb2016-09-18

  "Desculpe o transtorno" is a romantic comedy centered on a young rich man who's just begun to suffer from a double personality. His identity is split between Eduardo, a young businessman from São Paulo who works for his father's company, which is his main personality; and Duca, a bohemian alter ego from Rio de Janeiro who lives his life in the most carefree way. This is a film that's probably meant for Brazilian audiences, for there are some references that would hardly be caught by foreign spectators. The most important of them is the friendly rivalry between the Brazilian cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Rio is the second largest city in Brazil and it was the national capital for about two centuries (until 1960) and it still remains some kind of a cultural capital of Brazil. It's a sunny city by the sea, with lots of beaches and natural landscapes, as well as several historic buildings. Its inhabitants, who are called "Cariocas", have the reputation of being joyous, cool and somewhat rascal. São Paulo, on the other hand, is the largest city in Brazil (and in the Southern hemisphere), and it's regarded to be the economic and financial capital of the country. It's a concrete jungle far from the sea, full of modern skyscrapers and large avenues where the eternal traffic jams are part of the landscape. The "Paulistanos", as its residents are known, carry the stereotype of being conservative, workaholic, and uncool. Eduardo, the Paulistano guy, wakes up everyday at six o'clock in the morning in his large apartment with a modern and monochromatic furniture. He always wears the same black sports outfit, runs for some minutes through the same gray streets of São Paulo, goes back home, wears his suit and tie and then goes to his workplace: his father's company. This sequence repeats itself several times during the film, making the viewer quite tired, which might be on purpose: this way we can feel in our bones the boredom of Eduardo's monotonous life. His friends are his coworkers, i.e., his father's employees, which leads us to doubt the sincerity of those friendships, especially if we take into account Eduardo's grumpy and uncool nature. He's been in an artificial relationship with his girlfriend for eight years now. Viviana treats her submissive boyfriend as if he were a child deprived of any decision-making ability. At a restaurant, she compels Eduardo to make a marriage proposal, and then she records the scene with her phone for publishing it later in some social media. Meanwhile, Eduardo lets himself be conducted by his girlfriend as someone who doesn't even think about the possibility of frustrating other peoples' expectations. When Eduardo's mother dies, he must go to her burial in Rio de Janeiro, and it seems like he hasn't been there since the day when he was taken to São Paulo by his father right after his parents' divorce, when he was 8 years old. He revisits his hometown of Rio de Janeiro and that's when his Carioca alter ego begins to manifest itself. Duca is a relaxed and humorous guy, the opposite of his main personality. In Rio, Duca occasionally meets Bárbara, a Carioca girl who gave up her acting career and now makes some money wearing a pink rabbit costume at the airport. She talks confidently about Freudian concepts like ego, super ego and ID, but she later reveals that she had read about them on Wikipedia. Her interest in psychology is probably due to her being affected by a personality disorder that she describes this way: she really cares about making other people's shitty lives better, but she does nothing to make her own shitty life better. Nevertheless, she takes part in a group called Personality Disorders Anonymous, and she convinces Duca to go there with her so he can treat his double personality. The plot then revolves around the choice he must make between the honourable life of Eduardo, who's about to marry his annoying and futile fiancée, and the adventurous life of Duca in the company of his cute and smart Carioca girl. It's obviously not a particularly hard decision. This film can't cause much laughter, but it tries to lead the viewer to make some emotional personal reflection - unsuccessfully, I'd say. The script adheres to the new wave of politically correct humour (and the term is not used here in the usual pejorative sense) whose most outstanding exponent in Brazil nowadays is the hugely successful YouTube channel Porta dos Fundos, from which most of the cast was drawn. All the jokes avoid thoroughly any elements that might be regarded as racist, homophobic or chauvinist. There's this scene of cheating being caught in which the girlfriend calls the mistress a slut, and then the mistress replies that "no woman should be called a slut", in a clear feminist reference. Some dialogues try hard to sound deep and insightful, but this effect is probably only reached when the spectator is a teenager. Otherwise, they sound just corny. There are some really beautiful scenes of classical Rio de Janeiro natural and urban landscapes that are always a pleasure to appreciate. If you're looking for a mildly entertaining Brazilian popcorn romantic comedy, that's your film.

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