In a poor neighborhood in Recife, the lives of exotic and bizarre characters entwine in a bar and in a very low-budget hotel. The queer Dunga works in the hotel and has a crush on the butcher Wellington that is married with the religious Kika and has an affair with his mistress Dayse. The sick necrophiliac Isaac owns a yellow Mercedes Benz and wants to have sex with Lígia that owns of Bar Avenida.
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
This was a thoroughly disgusting and pointless film and I am not sure how folks could watch and praise it. The movie is filled with disgusting and wretchedness. Were these sentiments strong enough to hopefully keep you from seeing this film---I sure hope so! My thorough disgust for the film isn't because it shows the lowest elements of Brazilian society-- after all, I was quick to praise films like CITY OF GOD and CENTRAL STATION--and these films were violent and scary. However, their portrayals of the violence and cheapness of life in the lowest social strata were meant to be eye-opening and document the horrors--not provide a voyeuristic chamber of horrors meant only to turn our stomachs. I won't even begin to describe all the viscerally vile images from MANGO YELLOW--partly because they make me ill just thinking about it and partly because I could only take the movie to a certain point, then I made myself get up and turn it off! It truly seems to try to alienate much of its audience. If you want a similar experience, go to a slaughterhouse (it's already in the film) or stare at feces (it's also in the film and is apparently eaten by one of the scum in the film). Yuck.
In a poor neighborhood in Recife, the lives of exotic and bizarre characters entwine in a bar and in a very low-budget hotel. The queer Dunga (Matheus Nachtergaele) works in the hotel and has a crush on the butcher Wellington (Chico Diaz) that is married with the religious Kika (Dira Paes) and has an affair with his mistress Dayse (Magdale Alves). The sick necrophiliac Isaac (Jonas Bloch) owns a yellow Mercedes Benz and wants to have sex with Lígia (Leona Cavalli) that owns of Bar Avenida."Amarelo Manga" is practically the debut of director Cláudio Assis, at least this movie made him famous in Brazil, but actually is a boring exploitation of sex and low level situations. The nudity and sex scenes are absolutely unnecessary and have only the intention of shocking the audiences and most of them are free, like for example, the scenes of the asthmatic fat woman in the hotel; of the sex scene between Kika and Isaac with the hair brush; or Lígia taking her clothes off after closing her bar. I do not like this Brazilian director but many professional critics love him. The cast has great performances but the story is terrible. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Amarelo Manga" ("Mango Yellow")
Cláudio Assis won several awards at festivals for his feature debut, "Amarelo Manga" aka "Mango Yellow". His mosaic about some very troubled lives starts intriguing, and the talented, versatile cast (Matheus Nachtergaele, Chico Diaz, Dira Paes, Jonas Bloch and Leona Cavalli) keeps our attention till the end. However, Assis fails on the same aspects as other pretense "provocateurs", such as Sérgio Bianchi ("Chronically Unfeasible") and Larry Clark ("Kids" seemed to have some honesty, but "Ken Park" is one of the most unnecessary flicks ever made): excessive nudity (I actually think there should be MORE nudity in films, since nudity should be treated as natural by everybody; but this movie is a great example of how nudity should not be presented), too much visual and verbal masturbation for pure shock factor. I'm far from being a prude and that's why I admire directors like Todd Solondz, Lars von Trier, Pedro Almodóvar and Gregg Araki, just to name a few, who know how to provoke without being shallow, unlike Cláudio.People like Tata Amaral, Jorge Furtado, Beto Brant (and let's not even mention the internationally acclaimed Hector Babenco, Walter Salles and Fernando Meirelles), have made thought-provoking, intelligent films, without being gratuitous or shallow. They are the real provocateurs in Brazilian cinema, something that Assis and Sérgio Bianchi haven't proved to be, yet. There's more to a provocateur than "sex and stomach": wit is essential to the mixture, Mr. Assis. 3/10.
One of the main features of this movie is that it fully depicts what the Brazilian northeast is all about. Little can someone understand the movie by just reading the subtitles (especially when they are badly done, which is the case of this movie). Much of the intensity is conveyed through the language used by the actors. So, if you knew Portuguese, that'd help a lot. However, I do agree it's not a family movie and it'll surely shock the sensitive. Because of the fact that the movie portrays no main characters or a story, or because the characters wind up entwining along the story, it may seem to drag. Among a butcher, a Protestant, a homosexual, tramps, perverts, and others, the movie explicitly shows that colors play an important role in our lives, especially the yellow, which is the color of the most awful things there are in life. That's the sort of movie which most likely leaves you thinking how low can one go. Also, you'll either like it or hate it. No matter what, it'll cause you some kind of reaction as the movie ends.