Central Station

Item: Central Station
Rating: 7
Author: Christopher Null

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"Very Good"

Central Station Review

By Christopher Null

Heralded by critics and film fans -- and rightly so -- Central Station is the story of an unlikely friendship between the 67-year-old Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) and a 10-year-old boy Josué (Vinicius de Oliviera). Dora works as a letter writer (employed by the illiterate) in the busy Rio de Janeiro train station. Josué's mother pays Dora to write a letter to Josué's long-missing father, only to be run over by a bus moments later. Out of guilt (namely since she rarely mails the letters people pay her to write -- instead laughing over them with her roommate), she takes Josué into her home and eventually on a difficult journey to a remote section of Brazil to find Josué's father.

It's a fascinating, small, tale, held together by lush photography (and sadly, substantially weakened by a sorry, repetitious score). Montenegro owns the picture, her emotions fully riding the surface of the film. Worth a look, even if you don't care for foreign fare.

Aka Central do Brasil.

Facts and Figures

Year: 1998

Run time: 113 mins

In Theaters: Friday 20th November 1998

Box Office Worldwide: $5.6M

Distributed by: Sony Classics

Production compaines: MACT Productions, Videofilms, Riofilm

Reviews

Contactmusic.com: 3.5 / 5

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Fresh: 46 Rotten: 3

IMDB: 8.0 / 10

Cast & Crew

Director: Walter Salles

Producer: Martine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Arthur Cohn

Screenwriter: Marcos Bernstein, João Emanuel Carneiro

Starring: Fernanda Montenegro as Dora, Marília Pêra as Irene, Vinícius de Oliveira as Josué, Soia Lira as Ana, Othon Bastos as Cesar, Otávio Augusto as Pedrão, Stela Freitas as Yolanda, Matheus Nachtergaele as Isaías