A Dog's Will (2000)

A Dog's Will (Portuguese: O Auto da Compadecida, which literally means "The Act of the Compassionate") is a 2000 Brazilian comedy film, directed by Guel Arraes, with a screenplay by Arraes, Adriana Falcão and João Falcão. It is based on the 1955 play of almost the same name by Ariano Suassuna, with elements of other Suassuna's play, The Ghost and the Sow, and Torture of a Heart.

Synopsis

The plot concerns the adventures of João Grilo (Matheus Nachtergaele) and Chicó (Selton Mello), the most cowardly of men. Both struggle for daily bread in a telling representation of the life of the poor in North-East Brazil (O Nordeste) and gull a series of comical stereotypes - baker, landowner, and priest - in a series of interrelated episodes united by the passion of the adulterous baker's wife for her little dog who dies from eating the food she supplies to them as occasional workers, and the daughter of the landowner Antônio Morais (Paulo Goulart) - a magnificent comic character who represents the colonial pretensions of the erstwhile "colonial" class who owned the great estates (or "fazendas") of the region in which sugar production was central to a once-booming economy.

Actors