Lucio Flavio, an early film by the lauded Argentine director, is a crime thriller, based on a true story, mostly set in Rio. This Rio of the seventies feels amazingly evocative, the men in flares and open long-sleeved shirts, drinking cold beers whenever they can. You can feel the heat and the sweat oozing through the screen, something complemented by the judicious use of long-shots when we see the street in all its dusty glory, with Lucio, the anti-hero, on his way to his next robbery or about to be busted. The film is based on the way that a police death squad used criminals for its own corrupt ends. Lucio knows he’s a dead man walking, but it doesn’t stop him walking with a strut, embracing his destiny, a strangely heroic figure in a tawdry world. The remarkable thing about Babenco’s film is the way in which it shows a society that has changed so little. A strange quirk of this blog is that for some reason, the 2007 Brazilian film, Elite Squad, is by far the most viewed review, (obviously as a result of some kind of strange algorithm), and Lucio Flavio is a clear predecessor to Padilha’s blockbuster, with both films revealing the baroque arrangements between the police and the underworld, as the police seek to muscle in on the streets which belong to the criminals. Babenco directs with flair, using occasional dream sequences to lend colour to the prosaic events. Whilst in some ways a generic crime flick, Lucio Flavio also infiltrates a sly commentary on the torture and summary executions carried out by the dictatorships of the time, and as such was a way for Babenco to comment on events in his native country in a way that the censors would never have permitted if the commentary hadn’t been smuggled in under the guise of a crime film. It’s a fine example of the way in which the codes of cinema permit a discourse which is more wide reaching that the apparent subject matter, as well as offering a telling insight into a lost Brazilian decade.
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