Extra Credit: Jogo de Cena

                The film is based on the interesting stories of women. Various women were interviewed and their real stories were retold by actresses. So the women we see onscreen are actresses telling us the stories of the original women who were interviewed. I didn’t realize that the women I saw were actually actresses until the Q&A section and my mind was blown away. This explained why some of the women mentioned acting. In addition, it explained why their narratives were so vivid and spoken without filler words—even when I was telling my own personal narrative for the audio project I used filler words.

                The use of actresses to retell these stories prompted the question of: who owns the story? Is it the woman who originally told the story? Or is it the actress who added emotions and her own details to the story? There are also degrees of deceptive practice present. I was getting teary-eyed listening to the actress tell the story of how her son died and her ensuing erratic behavior. It made me wonder: would I still have had the same response if this was told by the original owner of the story?

I felt that this film probes us to think about the varying levels of authenticity. Edward Coutinho had the film show the actresses climbing up the stairs to reach the stage where they were being interviewed. In this sense, he was attempting to recreate the audition environment. The actresses also paused during the interview to give off the illusion that they are recollecting from their own memories. The actresses' acting profession also leaks into the narrative; one actress identified herself as a honest liar and another one revealed that she keeps a Japanese crystal in her pocket to simulate tears during crying scenes. 

I thought the editing and compilation of the film worked very well. One woman would mention the 'crowded' stage and another would mention that she was nervous being in front of the stage. The themes that linked the women together were struggles of motherhood, fears associated with pregnancy, troubled relationships with their fathers, coping with loss and aspirations of the future. The pairing up of stories together made the film very cohesive. It also showed that these stories could belong to any one because the themes of motherhood, pregnancy, etc. that are explored are very typical of being a woman—the only thing that differed between the stories were the turn of events. Regardless of what parts of the stories were real, they were very emotionally moving and I found the entirety of the film enjoyable to watch.