In 1864 Rua do Arvoredo was the stage for a crime that would become very famous, to the point of basing the book The Greatest Crime on Earth, written by Décio Freitas, which would become the inspiration for the new feature film by Guto Parente, The Cannibals Club.
The literary work deals with the aforementioned murders of the year 64, where a couple lured their victims home, killed them, quartered them and produced human meat sausages that were sold in a butcher shop in the city and much appreciated by the population. The victims were men seduced by Catarina Palse, who made them believe that she would go to bed with them, but that they ended up murdered by her husband, José Ramos.
The adaptation directed and scripted by Guto Parente, is a modern version of the crime, which takes place today and presents Otávio (Tavinho Teixeira), owner of a security company that alongside his wife Gilda (Ana Luiza Rios) has the strange habit of eating his employees. As part of the Clube dos Canibais, a peculiar club formed only by elite people who are attracted to a specific ritual of murder and tasting its victims, Otávio seems to live very well in this situation, until his wife discovers a great secret of a powerful member of the club and puts the couple's life in danger.
Parente openly declared his willingness to put gore elements in the feature, but that is not what we see when watching the work. With the exception of the first death caused by the couple, the scenes are not shocking and do not add to the absurdity of the comedy, at various times the violence is in the background, very well represented by the sounds and accurate cuts.
Regarding the details, the production does a great service. Without making use of unnecessary explanations, the script clearly conveys the idea behind each attitude, including the murder ritual, which goes beyond a perversion for the way it is performed and the most attentive can understand the reason. With the modernization of the plot, there is room to criticize the current society and the false idealism of the Brazilian elite, which are very well inserted in dialogues, without the need for great explanations to be fully understood by the public.
Simplicity is the biggest positive point of The Cannibals Club, the few words, attitudes and looks that make clear everything that needs to be addressed in the scenes give an enormous quality to the film. However, it is this simplicity that also brings the film's negative point: speed. Without the need to dwell on the details, everything happens very quickly and at the end of the work, there is the impression that something was missing, that the plot presented would have something more to give, even if it is not known exactly what.
The cast does its job well, but their performances have nothing exceptional and even if they pass the necessary emotions for the moment, they leave a little to be desired on some occasions.
These negative points in no way spoil the experience of the film, which serves as good entertainment for fans of criminal and violence themes, only weigh in on the overall quality of the feature, which shows that it could be better.
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