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THE THREE MARIAS Send This Review to a Friend
Revenge can be sweet--and bloody. The Brazilian import "The Three Marias" is a moody tale of vengeance wreaked by a mother who summons her three daughters to do the job as brutally as possible. You wouldn't want to be on the wrong side of this mama, or of her girls. Director Aluizio Abranches follows the family saga with the challenges each young woman must meet in fulfilling mother's demand. The result is overwrought but also absorbing and packed with grim detail.
The seeds were sown when Filomena (Marieta Severo) left her intended, Firmino Santos Guerra, for another man. Subsequently Filomena's beloved and their two sons are viciously murdered. Filomena vows to make the Santos Guerra family pay. She orders her daughters Maria Francisca (Julia Lemmertz), Maria Ross (Maria Luisa Mendonça) and Maria Pia (Luiza Mariani) to find three killers and get them to slay the murderers. What happens along the way becomes the substance of this odd tale.
The concept of revenge crosses international boundaries, and this work by Abranches, with screenwriters Heitor Dhalia and Wilson Freire, is steeped in the atmosphere of its particular locale, Brazil. That is to say, a story set in France, for example, would have an entirely different atmosphere. The plot is quite outlandish, yet the director manages to create an absorbing progression, and the viciousness inherent in the situation makes it both involving and off-putting.
The result is way over the top, and the artistry required to make the film rise above a mere saga of evil and retribution isn't sufficiently there. "The Three Marias," for all its passions, is not much more than a grisly potboiler. An Empire Pictures release.
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