Blame it on Rio

>> Bossa Nova can't quite muster the charm it aspires to

by MATTHEW HAYS

Bossa Nova is one of those films you really wish would work. The cast, including Amy Irving and Brazilian veteran actor Antonio Fagundes, are all doing their very best. The director, Bruno Barreto, has an impressive track record, including making Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, the '78 international hit. And then, of course, there's the sexy music.

But Bossa Nova has serious trouble making the right tone. It's meant to be a lively, funny, screwy comedy of errors, a film about characters whose lives cross at weird, inopportune--and opportune--moments. Irving (the director's wife, incidentally) plays a widowed English teacher who's now based in Rio de Janeiro. Her girlfriend is having a serious Internet relationship with a guy, dying to finally actually meet him in person. Irving is being hit on by one of her students, a famous Brazilian soccer player who is being bought off by a British soccer team. Fagundes, meanwhile, is a lawyer in the throes of marital breakup, who also has a young legal intern who meddles far, far too much.

Farcical setups like the ones here have been known to work, but Bossa Nova's engines get flooded early on when someone steps way too hard on the cute pedal. There are endearing little jokes, often meant to be naughty, that really do not come off (allegedly risqué banter on the Internet that leads to plenty of girly giggles doesn't cut it). There is too much mugging, too many knowing nods and winks to the audience, something which starts to feel more cloyingly tragic than farcically comic.

And Irving and Fagundes, as the film's central romantic premise, really, really don't work. Though clearly both talented as actors, together their chemistry feels constrained and their tryst forced. Not only do their ages feel off (she's fortysomething, he's pushing 60), their love-at-first-sight status simply doesn't feel remotely believable.

It's a crying shame, as Irving hasn't been seen nearly enough lately, and she is a talent. But Bossa Nova isn't quite what she needed, a film that seems to have all the elements but doesn't quite gel. As much as it pains me to say it: get the album and rent the travelogue, skip the movie. :

Bossa Nova opens Friday, Sept. 22