Sábado (1995)

English title: Saturday.

At the lobby of a run-down skyscraper in a major Brazilian city, a TV commercial is to be shot using one of its elevators, which hasn't been in use for a long time. The other elevator -- the operating one -- breaks down with people in it, amongst them a member of the film crew, two undertakers and a corpse. The lobby gets crammed with people. The production faces several problems and near-chaos ensues.

One of those "microcosmos" comedies, which tries to make satire out of the forced proximity of people from several social and cultural backgrounds. The targets are as varied as the smugness of the Brazilian middle class, the aversion to work of its lower class, the banalization of crime, the authoritarian traits buried deep within the little man's psyche, the consumeristic ideology sold by publicity, the tension between different regions of a big country, the exploitation of the poor by festering religious sects, etc. This all-over-the-place humor strategy feels contrived and unfunny, but perhaps might work had it been given a better script and direction than the ones we see here.

Rating: 25