PIXOTE

Director Hector Babenco focuses his penetrating but compassionate attention on Pixote (Portuguese for “Peewee”), a 10-year-old from the Sao Paulo slums. Pixote (Fernando Ramos Da Silva) is one of three million cast-off children who are forced to survive unspeakable squalor by unspeakable means. He instinctively leans to cope with the horrors of a hellish urban reformatory. Self-preservation necessitates a silent reaction to daily beatings, rapes, corruption and murder. He and his three friends escape to Rio, where they take up with Sueli (Marilia Pera), a prostitute whose customers are captive prey for the boys who rob them at gunpoint. In a pitiable caricature of family life, Sueli and the boys lead a continually dehumanizing existence. The leader of the little gang is Lilica (Jorge Juliao), a 17-year-old homosexual fearful of reaching his 18th birthday, since children under 18 are protected from prosecution for crime by Brazilian law. Babenco chose his young cast members from real slum children, completely illiterate, whose input altered nearly half the script. Outstanding characterizations by the seasoned actress Marilia Pera and Jorge Juliao's debut performance combine to make PIXOTE an indelible film experience. “PIXOTE is good enough to touch greatness; it restores your excitement about the confusing pleasure that movies can give.” – Pauline Kael, New Yorker