Starring: Guta Stresser, Myrian Muniz, Juliana Galdino, Wagner Moura Script: Heitor Dhalia, Marçal Aquino Original Title: Nina Running Time: 1:25 Country: Brazil Year: 2004 Official Site: Nina

Set in the hip underground world of Sao Paulo, Nina follows a young girl as she struggles to make ends meet, under the pressure of her roommate & landlord, a sinister old lady who locked the fridge before ultimately threatening to kick her out in the streets without any remorse.

Nina (Guta Stresser) is a lost and lonely soul, a Goth girl with a talent for drawing comics who lives in her own world, disconnected from reality and slightly disturbed. Rebellious, she quits her job as a waitress, but quickly finds out she can hardly survive as her landlady seems determined to crush her without mercy. She has enough self-esteem not to become a prostitute like her best friend but ends up selling her underwear to some creepy street vendor. She doesn't have any soul mate, is somewhat bisexual and can't really connect with anybody, including the girl who has a crush on her. Pushed to the limits by her landlady, she ends up succumbing to her dark inner urges, under the grip of her comic-book self-incarnation.

Nina is visually hypnotic, intertwining an eerie cinematography with some animated sequences inspired by her comics. David Lynch's influence is omnipresent, from Twin Peaks to Mulholland Drive, through emblematic Lynchian ingredients—long corridors, midgets, strange characters, dead bodies and a taste for surreal settings.

Nina is more about an experience than a film really going anywhere. Nothing really happens to her and, in the end, she runs away, free of her own fate, probably to go back to the same loose life in a different town. Just like her heroine, the film is cold and twisted, with a hint of dark humor, but unlike Lynch's work, there is nothing to hide below the surface, no puzzle to crack that would reveal some deep secret. Atmosphere prevails here, rather than content, but what might be more embarrassing is the way Nina's character has been drawn, like a nerdy teenage fantasy: she is a bisexual Goth who creates comics, sells her underwear and ends up having sex with a social misfit—a blind man—rather than with the cool tattooed guy.

Like its eponymous character's own nightmare, Nina is intense and moody, vanishing when you wake up, but leaving a hollow mark in your memory.

  Fred Thom