Central Station

Released in the same year we saw La Vita e Bella (Life is Beautiful) in 1998, some critics have argued that this Walter Salles film should have won the Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film. I like both movies equally and can't decide as of the moment which one is really better.

Central Station comes to me as a type of film that quietly creeps into your system, invades you and leaves you...transformed. The director has a knack for making suffering a thing of beauty and tragedy a work of art. We see Dora (Fernanda Montenegro), the former teacher who mulcts money from illiterate people by writing letters for their loved ones. We are aghast to learn that she does not mail them but keeps them piled inside a cabinet. What kind of woman is she, we ask.

Then comes Josue (Vinicius de Oliveira), the innocent young boy whose father runs away from them. Desperate, his young and beautiful mother hires Dora's service, asking him to support the boy. It seems that 'Madame Misery' (the evil twin sister of Lady Luck) is sneering at them. Josue's mother is killed in a freak accident while crossing a street in Sao Paolo, leaving him a complete orphan.

As Fate would have it, Dora and Josue are united by this bizaare circumstance. Dora at first, has nothing to do with the boy. But the boy has nowhere to go to and she has "promised" that the letter would reach Josue's father. Dora takes him in and together they search for the missing father. What they find along the way is more than what they expect. This is a tale friendship found at an unlikely place between two unlikely people, a story of love that binds complete strangers and a living testament that hope springs eternal.

Trivia: The two main characters in Life is Beautiful are named Dora and Giosue. Coincidental?

Director: Walter Salles (Motorcycle Diaries, Dark Water)
Cast: Fernanda Montenegro, Vinicius de Oliveira, Othon Bastos,
Country: Brasil