Despite its politically charged setting, the Brazilian drama The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is far more warm and nostalgic than incendiary, its coming-of-age story using the country’s former military dictatorship as a plot device to separate protagonist Mauro (Joelsas) from his parents and strand him in an unfamiliar environment where he can experience challenges and growth. It’s not a bad formula, and co-writer/director Hamburger delivers it with charm and care, thanks to some wonderfully understated performances from his child actors.
Joelsas conveys the curiosity and petulance of pre-pubescence without becoming cloying or shrill, and Piepszyk is equally winning as Hanna, Mauro’s neighbor in the São Paulo apartment complex where his parents leave him while they go on their “vacation.” That’s code for hiding out from the government, since Mauro’s parents are left-wing activists of some sort. The political details remain largely undefined, although presumably audiences in Brazil have a much keener understanding of the situation in their homeland in 1970. What’s more important to the film is that when Mauro shows up to stay with the grandfather he’s never met, he discovers that the man has just died that morning.
Taken in by his grandfather’s next-door neighbor and the apartment complex’s community of Orthodox Jews, Mauro learns a little about self-sufficiency, friendship and soccer as a handy metaphor for life. Since 1970 is also a year that Brazil won the World Cup, Hamburger has another prepackaged historical drama to use as a backdrop, and it’s clear that sports holds a lot more fascination for young Mauro than politics does.
The film’s sun-dappled, slightly desaturated look radiates nostalgia, and even as the government cracks down on some of Mauro’s new friends toward the end of the film, the tone never wavers from sweet and wistful. Year’s story of a young boy’s maturation is ultimately not really anything new, but that comforting familiarity, even in a foreign country in a time of political strife, is what makes it quietly effective.
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
***
Michel Joelsas, Germano Haiut, Daniela Piepszyk
Directed by Cao Hamburger
Rated PG