Pixote

Before he became the darling of the American art house circuit with such films as "Kiss of the Spider Woman," "Ironweed" and "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," director Hector Babenco was making equally impressive films in his native Brazil. One of these was the grueling "Pixote". In Portuguese, Pixote means "Pee Wee," an apt name for the character played by ten-year-old Fernando Ramos da Silva. One of Brazil's millions of homeless street children, Pixote's experience is here recounted in vivid detail that some will find too harsh and realistic. Crime, brutality, sexual abuse and worse are all a part of what Pixote witnesses as both a child of the street and an inmate at a juvenile detention center. This is no glowing portrait of an innocent young child, however, but a disturbing commentary on a serious social problem in modern Brazil for which neither the country nor Babenco appears to have an answer.