Central Station

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

In Rio's main railroad terminal, Dora, a sour old woman (uncompromisingly played by Fernanda Montenegro), scratches out a living writing letters for the illiterate. When a customer is killed in an accident, the dead woman's son (the winsomely suspicious Vinicius de Oliveira) becomes Dora's responsibility. The two set out across the Brazilian vastness to find the boy's errant father. Theirs is an odyssey of simple problems, simple emotional discoveries, a relationship full of knots that Salles permits to unwind in an unforced, unsentimental fashion. His imagery, like his storytelling, is clear, often unaffectedly lovely, and quietly, powerfully haunting.

--By Richard Schickel