Director Marco Jorge`s 2007 Film: Estômago
A Gastronomical Film About Love, Envy and Cooking
Nov 5, 2008
The Brazilian movie Estômago ('stomach') tells the story of Raimundo Nonato (João Miguel), who steps off a bus in a strange town, hungry, thirsty and penniless. In return for food and a mattress on the floor, café owner Zulmiro (Zeca Cenovicz) takes him on as a kitchen help and teaches him to make pastel and coxinhas.
Estomago and the Power of Food
Raimundo is a simple fellow but he has a talent for cooking and his deep-fried snacks soon attract attention. One of the first to notice is Íria (Fabiula Nascimento), a voluptuous prostitute and exotic dancer, who can’t cook but loves to eat. She and Raimundo start an affair in which he provides the food and she provides the sex.
When Giovanni (Carlo Briani), the owner of fancy Italian restaurant Boccaccio, offers Raimundo a chef’s apprenticeship with him, things seem to be looking up. But the next scene shows Raimundo in prison, living in a cramped cell controlled by the violent Bajiú (Babu Santana) and subsisting on food crawling with maggots. No details are given about why Raimundo is in jail but it becomes apparent that this is a flash-forward and Íria and Giovanni are in his past.
Raimundo makes it known that he used to be a cook and, with some help, is able to smuggle cheese, herbs and other luxury items into the cell, turning the putrid prison fare into fragrant works of art. As a result, he is given the nickname Rosemary.
From here, the film jumps backwards and forwards in time between the prison and Raimundo’s climb up the prison ranks, thanks to his culinary skills, and Boccaccio and the increasingly complicated relationship between him, Íria and Giovanni. The past closes in on the present and, as Raimundo carefully prepares a juicy steak with oil and garlic, the horrific crime that put him in jail is finally revealed.
Food Is Estômago’s Strong Point
The broken narrative structure of Estômago creates suspense but also serves to make it rather disjointed, and the characters’ development from one section of the movie to the next can be sudden and, as a result less, convincing. Where the movie really excels, however, is in its focus on food. There are numerous close-up shots of ingredients or Raimundo’s hands as he slices onions or works eggs into a mound of flour for dough (imagine it is a woman’s backside, Zulmiro instructs him). The sounds associated with cooking are just as important, from frying garlic to a gently bubbling stew.
The movie also emphasizes the true enjoyment of eating, particularly on Íria’s part. The perfect example of her abandoning herself to culinary pleasure is when she gets out of Raimundo’s bed one night to eat his pastels naked in the light of the refrigerator.
Food is ultimately what motivates all the main characters in Estômago, and the movie tries to show how food is linked not just to the appeasement of hunger, but to so many other emotions: love, pleasure, passion, lust, envy, satisfaction. It is also refreshing to see that Estômago can tell an intriguing story without resorting to the clichés of thong-clad beach babes or violent favelas so often associated with Brazil.
