Love Strange Love

This Brazilian movie somewhat resembles the soapy, exploitative Brazilian "pornochachada" films of its era, but is a much more serious and arty (and pretentious) period film. The fairly serious plot is certainly not helped by the atrocious English dubbing of the existing VHS version, but the bigger problem is that the whole movie is even more laughably implausible than even the wildest, most out-there "pornochadas" I've seen.

The film is told in flashback as a fifty-something man remembers a brief period during WWII where he came to visit an upscale brothel managed by his mother. As political intrigue swirls both inside and outside the brothel, the twelve-year-old protagonist is seduced by no less than three of the prostitutes. The serious historical intrigue notwithstanding, it's very hard to buy (even in Brazil)that adult women working daily in the sex trade could not resist bedding a boy whose testicles probably haven't dropped yet. Obviously, the sex scenes between the nude adult women and the partially nude adolescent boy were (and still would be) considered controversial, but I think this movie is much less guilty of exploiting the adolescent male body than it is of exploiting the adolescent male fantasies that most adult males still vividly recall. (Besides if you're really looking at the twelve-year-old actor in the presence of all these voluptuous Brazilian women, I think it says a lot more about you than it does the movie).

As other reviews have mentioned, one of the prostitutes here is played Xuxa Menghel who went on to become a pretty big celebrity singer (and kiddie TV host!) in Brazil. She may indeed be the reason this rattling skeleton in her closet does not seemingly exist in any version with its native language. Still, she is undeniably sexy whether stripping out of a ridiculous bear costume or rubbing her naked self against the barely pubescent protagonist. She and some of the other women (including "pornochchada" regular Vanessa Alves)are really the only thing this overly serious, and at the same time, laughably ridiculous movie really has going for it.