Diario de Pernambuco, 25/03/2011

O filme Viajo porque preciso, volto porque te amo ganhou um bom espaço na edição de ontem (quinta-feira) do jornal The New York Times. A crítica de cinema Jeannette Catsoulis classifica o filme como uma “provocativa ficção experimental” e faz uma descrição do longa cheia de impressões pessoais, além de elogiar a narração de Irandhir Santos e a caracterização visual das paisagens do interior do Nordeste do Brasil.

O filme, que foi exibido duas vezes em Nova York em um festival no ano passado, entra em cartaz nesta sexta em Manhattan. A direção é do pernambucano Marcelo Gomes e do cearense Karim Aïnouz. O longa também foi selecionado para o famoso festival de cinema de Veneza em 2009.

Veja o trailer do filme:

A seguir veja a reportagem do The New York Times na íntegra:

I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You (2009)

Moods and Messages From the Earth
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Published: March 24, 2011

As singular as its title, “I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You” embraces road movie, personal journal and trancelike study of arcing grief.

Voiced by an unseen geologist (Irandhir Santos) to his left-behind love, this provocative experimental fiction from Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz unfolds on the stark scrublands of northeast Brazil. Studying the economic viability of cutting a canal through the forbiddingly arid land and displacing its inhabitants, the geologist finds that the barren, lonely surroundings increasingly exacerbate his dispirited mood. Home- and heartsick, veering from despair to resignation, he records the Earth’s fractures and resists “the mad urge to turn back.”

Coming in at a tight 75 minutes, this strikingly original travelogue glides on the lovely lilt of Mr. Santos’s Portuguese narration. Listing the contents of a backpack (magnet, chloric acid, machete) or yearning for the absent beloved, his voice caresses the film’s portraits of soon-to-be-evacuees — a woman snipping rose petals from pink Styrofoam; two brothers stuffing straw mattresses, oaken faces buffed with sweat — like melancholy music. The sway of young prostitutes and a couple dancing in a nightclub, a tiny baby nestled between them, keeps time.

To achieve the film’s unusual tones and textures, the director of photography, Heloisa Passos, used a variety of formats, assembling a visual record of poverty and labor that’s at once barbed and narcotic. As the region’s parched terrain drifts past the car’s dust-smeared windshield, the candid longing of a pretty call girl for “a leisure life” could not possibly seem more fruitless or more rueful.

I TRAVEL BECAUSE I HAVE TO, I COME BACK BECAUSE I LOVE YOU

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Marcelo Gomes and Karim Aïnouz; director of photography, Heloisa Passos; edited by Karen Harley; music by Chambaril; produced by João Vieira Jr. and Daniela Capelato; released by FiGa Films. At the Anthology Film Archives, 32-34 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village. In Portuguese, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Irandhir Santos (José Renato).

***
Via Diario de Pernambuco