Once virtually invisible, except as encoded by effeminate male and butch female characters, gay cinema proliferates to an unprecedented degree.
Only the quantity of gay filmmakers and the relative assurance of a payoff on a modest investment accounts for a movie such as "Madame Sata," which treks back to 1932 -- and briefly 1942 -- to immortalize a transvestite singer in Rio who also was an incorrigible lowlife.
We wouldn't be seeing even this sliver of the life of Joao Francisco dos Santos (Lazaro Ramos) had he not become a celebrated paradox -- a formidable street fighter and murderer who was proud and righteous about his homosexuality decades before its social de-closeting.
The androgynous Joao (1900-76) does not emerge as the drag queen Madame Sata until the film's conclusion, despite its title. The movie concentrates instead on sordid episodes when he was 32 and nurturing the volatility with which he conducted his life.
A volatile gay hustler who idolized singer-actress Josephine Baker, he lived with single mother-prostitute Laurita (Marcelia Cartaxo), her toddler and Taboo (Flavio Bauraqui), a flamboyant seamstress and male prostitute whom Joao regularly abused.
The film settles for a snapshot of Joao, albeit a representative one, instead of the broader view of him as someone who did 27 years in prison, adopted eight children including Laurita's, and died of cancer after enjoying some notoriety as a performer and folk hero.
Writer-director Karim Ainouz reduces the material to a manageable period but leaves biographical details sketchy and relationships all but impossible to decipher.
Perhaps what's most surprising for a 21st-century release is the quantity of hard-to-read white-on-white English subtitles over the Portuguese dialogue. You make allowances for faded prints of old foreign classics. But "Madame Sata"â¢
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Movie Details
'Madame Sata'Director : Karim Ainouz.
Stars : Lazaro Ramos, Flavio Bauraqui, Marcelia Cartaxo.
MPAA rating : Unrated but R in nature because of sex, nudity, violence and substance abuse.
Now playing : Harris, Downtown.
