Pixote (1981)

****

This dramatization casts genuine Brazilian street kids running amok with few other options available to them other than violent crime and vice. The main character of the film, Pixote, is merely 10 years old and the movie begins with him being thrown into a reformatory where conditions are deplorable. Watching a tender pre-pubescent go through the dregs of what might as well be an adult prison…well, at the very least it makes you want to reach through the screen and wipe the grime off of Pixote’s seldom-washed face.

Upon escaping the dreadful reformatory, Pixote and his friends take to the streets of Sao Paulo picking pockets, then wind up relocating to Rio in order to deal drugs and pimp a drunkard prostitute three times their age. Of course, things get pretty hairy, in over their heads and all, but the kids prove themselves relatively savvy. Then again, drastic circumstances are eventually going to overtake children criminals and that’s just the way it is, from here to South America to anywhere.

A pre-cursor to later juvenile delinquency films including Menace II Society, Le Haine and Cidade de Deus, Pixote demonstrates the bleakness of urban poverty in all its gore and tragedy. These kids are certainly doing plenty of wrong, but how can they be rightfully blamed coming up as they do? It’s just good that there are filmmakers out there wanting to show us just how messed up things can get, so that those on the outside looking in might actually see the vulnerably precious humanity inherent to the situation.