Allan Deberton’s “Feito Pipa” centers on Gugu, played by Yuri Gomes, a boy who enjoys a free-spirited childhood with his grandmother Dilma, played by Teca Pereira. She gives him affection and room to explore his interests in football and dance. That life changes as her Alzheimer’s worsens and she is admitted to a care facility, leaving Gugu to move in with his father, played by Lázaro Ramos.
The father is introduced as a potentially threatening presence, despite repeatedly saying that he loves his son. Ramos’s familiar screen persona adds ambiguity to the portrayal. The father tries to build a relationship with Gugu, including teaching him to ride a motorcycle, but their closeness feels forced. Gugu also meets his younger half-sister, a relationship the film could have used to explore the father’s different bonds with his children.
Instead, the story focuses on the father’s anxiety about Gugu’s sexuality. He interprets ordinary signs as evidence that his son might be gay, and his suspicions lead to repression just as Gugu loses the support of his grandmother. The review notes that the boy’s mother and stepmother are absent from the story, while the father becomes his main remaining source of affection.
The film is a more direct melodrama than Deberton’s first feature, “Pacarrete,” which balanced comedy with drama and was rooted in the Ceará city of Russas. “Feito Pipa” concentrates on the conflict between a son and social expectations, but offers little precision about where the story takes place or the characters’ social circumstances. The grandmother’s home, for instance, feels more like a set than a lived-in space, and the photography gives locations few distinct features.
The review argues that the focus on the central issue comes at the expense of fuller characterization and a more concrete world. It also contrasts “Feito Pipa” with Luigi Comencini’s “When Love Is Cruel,” another father-and-son melodrama, and with Gabriel Martins’s “Vicentina Pede Desculpas,” whose characters are presented as Black and from the outskirts. “Feito Pipa,” by comparison, could unfold among people of many backgrounds and places.
Despite these limitations, the review describes the film’s narrative development as effective. A more precisely grounded setting and more fully developed characters, it suggests, might have brought greater excess and intensity to its melodrama without undermining the story’s progression.
Sources: Folha Ilustrada.