SIFF Review: Beyond Ipanema (all the way to the moon!)

A White Tank Top Movie Review

As I pondered whether I was experiencing the worst Memorial Day weekend weather of all time, it cheered me yesterday to know I was going to see a documentary about Brazil, where it was undoubtedly warm and sunny. Perhaps because of the Folk Life festival going on right next to SIFF Cinema, I was joined in the theatre by a number of bearded older men, wearing talismans around their necks. Fitting, since Beyond Ipanema is about music that bridges generic and generational gaps.

Director Guto Barra is obliged to start from the beginning of Brazilian music in America, which is Carmen Miranda, who tried to sneak as much Portuguese as possible into her albums and films. After Carmen came the (slightly) less exoticized export Black Orpheus, which turns the myth into a musical set during Carnival. The bossa nova soundtrack and samba dancing came to the States with the film in 1960 and are influential still.

While I’ve already heard “The Girl from Ipanema” enough to last me a lifetime, the film offers some great tidbits on the song. Did you know that Astrud Gilberto only sang on “The Girl from Ipanema” because it was late and she just happened to be in the studio with her husband João and everyone was drunk and thought it could work because she spoke some English? 

Read the full review after the jump.

Also, since she was not on the record contract, she never received any royalties from the track. Barra admitted that he was so sick of hearing “The Girl from Ipanema” that he had a contemporary artist record an electronic version to use in the film.

Still, it’s inescapable. One group of Apollo astronauts was playing the song when they landed on the moon (perhaps because the smooth rhythms would charm even an extraterrestrial). 

In some ways, it’s a shame that the film spends so much time on the more familiar bossa nova and samba movements because it leaves less time for the more unknown (to me) genres like farró (danceable folk music from northern Brazil) and favela funk (the really loud stuff from the slums that M.I.A. likes so much). While many artists appear in quick succession in the second half of the film, the group Garotas Suecas stand out. They find themselves travelling from São Paulo to New York as often as possible because they, illogically, learn more about Brazilian music in New York City than in Brazil itself. 

To further confirm the establishment of Brazilian music in the States, we get a sequence on the Frederick Douglass High School samba band program in Harlem (it’s a Mad Hot Ballroom-style documentary follow-up waiting to happen). Despite the fact that no teacher or administrator at the school is Brazilian, they started the program with great success and it’s clearly the highlight of kids’ days. 

I was surprised that people like Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso didn’t have more critiques of the way that American culture has co-opted their music. But I shouldn’t have been confused by their lack of cynicism — they seem at ease with our internet society, where you get a lot more sleep if you think of cultural exchange as sharing instead of stealing. According to the folk-electronic singer/songwriter Otto: “Music has no identity.” 

If my experience of watching Beyond Ipanema is any indication, you will have a whole bunch of new music to download and new crushes to develop when you see it (hello: Céu).  And you’ll definitely want to visit Brazilian vinyl store Tropicalia in Furs next time you’re in New York City — it’s not a place to shop as much as a place to hang out with new friends and listen to the bottomless trove of Brazilian sounds.

Amazingly, I walked out of the theatre into clear skies and visions of happy people in shorts. I credit Beyond Ipanema for bringing out the sun.