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The Prison And The StreetVarietyRONNIE SCHEIB Elegantly shot and extremely well-structured docu, recipient of a Sundance Documentary Fund grant, "The Prison and the Street" follows three female inmates at the Madre Pelletier Penitentiary in Brazil. Intercutting between the women, all at different phases of their lives and prison sentences, helmer Liliana Sulzbach has crafted a riveting look at the difficult transition from the outside world to prison and the sometimes even scarier transition back again. Impressive docu should invite considerable fest and cable play. Claudia, the inmate who has served the longest, has been in jail for robbery and homicide for 28 of her 54 years. At pic's opening, she is wandering around Porto Alegre looking for a bus stop, asking person after person, each of whom indicates a different direction in a bustling outdoor street scene that contrasts with the orderly sameness of her cozily decorated cell. Claudia has reluctantly transferred from the prison's secure facility to its "semi-open" halfway house far later than ordinarily scheduled (normally, prisoners switch over after serving one-sixth of their sentence). Often shot in confessional close-up, Claudia is given to soft-spoken introspection, obsessed with somehow reconnecting with the son whom she hasn't seen since he was a child. Claudia has taken under her wing Daniela, a young, frightened, pregnant 19 year old whose crime -- infanticide -- makes her the target of death threats. Sulzbach never gets very close to Daniela, whose nervous pronouncements range from hysterical professions of innocence to answering fan mail from marriage-minded admirers. The penitentiary, at a loss as to how to keep Daniela from harm once protector Claudia has matriculated to the open facility, admits her to a mental ward, perhaps not solely for her physical well-being. Betania, a 28-year-old with four kids, projects a unique attitude that furnishes Sulzbach with an ironic mid-point between Claudia's regret over wasted years and Daniela's youthful lack of direction. Of a somewhat upbeat, if sardonically streetwise bent, Betania has just completed one-sixth of her 15-year sentence and cries when leaving her cellmate/lover for the halfway house. Obtaining permission to visit her aunt, she goes on the lam, always intending to return to jail and finish her sentence. Pic veers toward comedy as Sulzbach rejoins Betania first one month, then four months and finally a year after she went AWOL, each time ensconced at a different location with a different boyfriend and a brand new short-term plan. Her friendly, slightly amoral openness and zest make her temporary freedom seem as inevitable as it is ultimately aimless.Sulzbach maintains a lucid tone throughout that balances reflection and humor. The penitentiary, run by nuns, is not presented as the stuff of horrified exposes. A man comes to the gate each night, shouting out to his wife (and the entire prison) all the details of the family's day, signing off with a declaration of love that is echoed back from an open jailhouse window. Tech credits are well above average, the crispness of sound and image adding greatly to pic's total lack of cliched misery or "lower depths"-type slumming. |
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