The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
What 12-year-old Mauro (Michel Joelsas) doesn’t know won’t hurt him, that’s the logic used by his cautious parents as they leave him in São Paulo to stay with a grandfather he’s never met, and head for an open-ended “vacation” in an undisclosed location. Exile is one of the words Mauro will learn in 1970 during their absence, but when they drop him off at an apartment building in the ethnically diverse Bom Retiro district, his biggest concern is whether Brazil will qualify for the upcoming World Cup.
With the ease of a natural storyteller, co-writer and director Cao Hamburger has deftly established Mauro’s soccer fever, his close relationship to parents who have run afoul of Brazil’s unforgiving dictatorship, and the Jewish identity his father left behind. He’s also set Mauro on a path from sheltered, well-loved child unaware of his tenuous situation, to a boy wide awake to the possibilities and dangers of life.
The hastily planned family reunion doesn’t take place, and Mauro is discovered waiting on his grandfather’s doorstep by an elderly neighbor, Shlomo (Germano Haiut). Addressing him first in Yiddish and then Portuguese, Shlomo is shocked to find that Mauro has no knowledge of his grandfather’s sudden death, and no way to contact his parents. Taciturn and solitary, Shlomo reluctantly takes him in, sharing the responsibility with the tightly-knit Jewish community who once embraced Mauro’s grandfather and father.
The Year My Parents Went on Vacation addresses political repression, religious identity and cultural assimilation in the context of an intimate coming of age tale, and does it without cloying sentimentality or didactic sloganeering. Hamburger beautifully blends the 1970 World Cup (May 31 to June 21 in Mexico City) into the storyline, emphasizing games where the seemingly unstoppable Brazilian line-up led by Pelé seemed vulnerable, such as the First Round showdown with Czechoslovakia.
Year excels at capturing a child’s perspective and expressing it within a larger context, giving both Mauro and Shlomo their due. The performances overall are natural and unselfconscious, but the unvarnished honesty and strong personalities of the child actors are a marvel, particularly Daniela Piepszyk’s dynamic Hanna.
Hamburger has made a movie that isn’t nostalgic, but actually looks as if it were made in 1970s, capturing the specific feel – loose yet sharply observant – of that freewheeling decade’s cinema. Year has the vibrant immediacy of a game played to win, with the knowledge that goals aren’t guaranteed.
© 2008, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.