About Us [Sobre Nós] *** (2017, Thiago Cazado, Rodrigo Bittes, Carmen Moretzsohn) – Classic Movie Review 13,135

About Us [Sobre Nos] (2017).

About Us [Sobre Nós] (2017)

Thiago Cazado stars in the hauntingly bitter-sweet 2017 Brazilian LGBT romantic drama film About Us [Sobre Nós] as Diego, who shares first blissful love – a love that’s lost – with the beautifully handsome young Matheus (Rodrigo Bittes).

Thiago Cazado stars in the 2017 Brazilian LGBT romantic drama film About Us [Sobre Nós] as Diego, who decides to leave his hometown in Brazil to attend a film school in California for four years, leaving behind the beautifully handsome young Matheus (Rodrigo Bittes), with whom he has fallen in love and shares a deep, lasting passion and scenes of pure joy. Years later, back in Brazil, he decides to make a reflective film about their relationship, showing that passion can increase motivation but ironically how that can get in the way of the love.

About Us is the teasingly fictionalised personal diary of an old love, seen through a nostalgic glow. It plays more like a youthful infatuation (‘You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen’), rather than true romance, though the two men swear true undying love, and Cazado seems to think that, although it’s long over, it will last for ever. And in one way it will, two ways actually, his memory and now the film. But it is valuable anyway for its passion, and it’s ingenious to make a whole feature out of this slice of young autobiography. It is a well-designed calling card, and vital film-making (and acting) experience for the better things to come.

About Us is a love letter to a lost, or abandoned true love. Bitter-sweet, lyrical and romantic, but quite harsh anyway, perhaps more revealing than maybe was intended by Cazado. The ‘hero’ deceives his lover, and decides to put career before love. mmm… Between the romance and the gloom, there’s a welcome amusing comedic interlude with the arrival of Diego’s way-too-permissive mom.

It is all very well done, passionately done, hauntingly done, but somehow not very likeable, unlike Thiago Cazado’s much more expert 2019 film Cousins. But then Cousins is one of those films you want to hug. He said he couldn’t have made Cousins without first making About Us.

However, both films are strongly recommended, though they should ideally be seen in the order of their making.

Directors: Mauro Carvalho, Thiago Cazado.

Stars: Thiago Cazado, Rodrigo Bittes, Carmen Moretzsohn.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,135

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About Us [Sobre Nós] (2017, Thiago Cazado, Rodrigo Bittes