This was the first big Brazilian drama that HBO worked on, and it’s a five-episode miniseries that lasts almost five hours in total. It’s a really emotional and political story set in Rio de Janeiro during the late 1980s, and it does a great job of showing what that era felt like while the country was dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis. Since the world feels so divided today, the show is a beautiful reminder of how queer people can find power by standing together when things are hard. The story is actually based on real things that happened, specifically about flight attendants who smuggled AIDS medicine from the US into Brazil in the 80s. It works as both a history drama and a strong political message. The show is mostly about three people: Nando, his best friend Lea (they both work as flight attendants for Fly Brasil), and Raul, who is a performer and an activist. A lot of the story happens at a club called Paradise, which was one of the few open gay clubs back in the 80s. Nando is a h...
If you read the synopsis of this movie, it sounds interesting but personally it did not do it for me. There were 2 things that I was not comfortable. It was too dark and after a while I thought it was just being stretched.Mark, a 15 year old village guy runs from him home after his father forces him to go to school. When he reaches Prague, he is followed by a pimp, Honza. Since Mark runs out of money, Honza convinces him to be his rabbit, a male prostitute. His first assignment leaves him beaten and bruised and then he meets a fellow hustler David. Together they form a team, get Hona to prison and start a successful prostitution racket. Hereon the film stats with characters coming in and out and how it affects their life. Each time the life gives them scars that grow more visible as does the threat of drug problems and AIDS. They eventually consent to embrace the lowest level of making gay porn where the cruel director forces Marek to be sodomized by David. They are raided by the police and Honza reappears as Marek's nemesis. Mark by this stage is very hallucinated with drugs. Meanwhile his father when realizes what mark would have gotten into comes to Prague looking for him but just passes Mark without realizing how he had drugged and bled himself to death in a toilet stall on the railway platform.
This film is dark, frank, cruel, realistic, and sweats with the evil of the belly of the beast that is Prague's underworld.It is actually too realistic and at one point you dont even want to know all that because its too much to handle. The film will find the audiene but how I wished that this film could have been trimmed out and edited better.
Go for it if you like dark, depressing movies. (4/10)
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