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Once upon a time... there was a rude, loud, and foul-moutheed princess, or the carnvalesque-grotesque in "Carlota Joaquina: Princesa do Brasil"

2013; CIESPAL; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2327-4247

Silvia M. Roca-Martinez,

Cultural, Media, and Literary Studies

The poster child of Retomada or Brazilian Film Renaissance, Carla Camurati's Joaquina: Princesa do Brasil (1995) is historical satire about arrival of Portuguese court in Brazil. Despite being done on slim budget, film brought more than million spectators out of their homes and into movie theaters, an unprecedented number for Brazilian movies. Indeed, in her attempt to illustrate that a historia e ficcao do homem in provocative, unpredictable, and highly entertaining fashion, Carla Camurati--the film's director, writer, producer, researcher, and distributor--took industry and Brazilians alike by storm (Villalta 239). As critic Luiz Zanin Oricchio notes, com voltouse falar do cinema nacional (26). The film is set in Spain, Portugal and Brazil during latter decades of 18th century and first two decades of 19th century. It portrays life of real historical figure, Spanish infante Joaquina Teresa de Borbon y Borbon, who was married off by her family to Portuguese prince Dom Joao when she was shy often years. Her marriage meant contract between two nations: it constituted efforts on part of Spanish crown to resume political liaison with neighboring Portugal. The film follows Joaquina's journey from Spanish court to Portugal, later to Brazil and eventually back to Portugal, as well as her journey from childhood to womanhood. In framing story, Scotsman sitting on seashore narrates Joaquina's story to his ten-year-old-female cousin, Yolanda. His narration is triggered by finding bottle with text supposedly written by Salvador Dali, in which he explains his reasons for never visiting Brazil. The Scotsman volunteers to tell Yolanda story about Joaquina, princess of Brazil. As though it were fairy-tale, Scotsman proceeds to storytelling, sparing no details and frequently dwelling on sexual as well as scatological aspects of lives of characters. The film goes back and forth between setting by seashore with Yolanda and storyteller and Joaquina's life. Despite unparalleled success at box office, critics' reviews of Joaquina have been mixed. Darien J. Davies, for instance, calls it a visual feast but notes that film displays a Brazilian tendency to downplay racial and sexual conflict and refusal to take oppression too seriously (937). I disagree with Davies' opinion of film, as it undermines Brazilians' awareness of their country's past and present social issues. Nonetheless, Davies draws some intriguing connections between political situation depicted in film and Brazil of 1990's when she claims that the film says as much about present as it does about past, an idea also shared by critics Luis Carlos Villalta and Luiz Zanin Oricchio (Davies 938). In fact, Zanin Oricchio concludes that Carlota aparece ... como base satirica para explicar um pais que nao de certo (41). (1) On different note, Francisca L Nogueira de Azevedo observes that Joaquina is historical film that does not teach anything new but captures and exploits ideas already rooted in audience's mind, thus reinforcing stereotypes ingrained in Brazilian collective imaginary. Along those lines, scholars Stephanie Dennison and Lisa Shaw have even seen interesting connections between Camurati's film and chanchadas--popular, Brazilian musical comedies that exploited vulgarity. They base their assertion on fact that film exhibits traits also found in chanchadas, like clash of cultures, making fun of stupidity, accents, elite, avarice of Portuguese, and abundance of ethnic jokes, among other features. Notwithstanding fact that chanchadas could also be political and they did poke fun at ethnic groups, placing Joaquina in chanchada tradition fails to acknowledge its critical stance towards issues such as fetishization of history or construction of gender. …