Knee Slapper

By John Skow

DONA FLOR AND HER TWO HUSBANDS

Directed and Written by Bruno Barreto

There's a marvelously funny scene in this cheerful Brazilian comedy--based on a novel by Jorge Amado--that depends for its effect on two social elements that would seldom be found together in a Hollywood or even European movie. One is enough permissiveness to allow the filming of nude actors going vigorously through the motions of sexual intercourse. The other that there is enough strictness and propriety so that the niceties of marital faithfulness and the awful pratfall of cuckoldry matter a great deal.

Here's what happens. Dona Flor (Sonia Braga) is a lovely and virtuous young widow who marries a dull fellow, the local pharmacist (Mauro Mendonca). To her pretty confusion, the ghost of her randy first husband Vadinho (Jose Wilker) returns to torment her. He was a cad, a drunk and a gambler, who dropped dead from too much carnival carousing, and his only redeeming quality was that he was good at lovemaking. Death has not reformed him, and in his scapegrace way he tries to get her into bed. She is tempted, but refuses, saying that it would not be decent. Nonsense, says Vadinho, we're married. But she knows all about "Till death do us part," and she is not having any, although it's clear that the idea appeals to her.

That night as she is in bed, making love rather absentmindedly to her live husband, an oaf who performs his marital duties like a man trying to park a bread van, the lecherous specter reappears to watch. The pharmacist can't see him, but Dona Flor can. Her consternation is splendid. As she rolls her eyes at him in anger and embarrassment, he sits cross-legged atop a large wardrobe chest beating time with his hands on his naked thighs and laughing like a demon.

There is no doubt about the outcome. Nor should there be: the diabolical first husband, the virtuous widow and the cloddish second husband have been dancing their dance in folk tales for thousands of years. The film's last shot is of people leaving church. Dona Flor is dressed in her best, and so is the pharmacist. Vadinho, his arm linked with Dona Flor's, is naked, and very pleased with himself.

-- John Skow

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