Another report on: Beautiful Bitch (2007) by Martin Krieger

Bica contemplates her homeless situation and decides what to do next.

Although it is still just the first week of the SB International Film Festival, Beautiful Bitch is my favorite so far and I doubt there will be another that I find so profound. The really sad story shows the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. The independently made movie is creating quite a hubbub in the film community here. The showing I saw on the 4th day of the festival, was the 5th screening of the film and it was sold out! Everyone is saying what a great movie it is. The story begins – and returns near the end of the movie – in the back trunk of car being hauled to a dealership on a truck carriers with about 8 new cars. Our heroine, Bica, is hiding in back getting a free ride to her locale, a city she has never been tobefore in a seemingly different country. She is clutching a doll her little brother gave her before he was snatched away by the police after they got chased for stealing something. Without showing us how she got there, she and three boys are living with a “patron” who sends them out to steal every day in exchange for a place to sleep and eat. If they don’t meet their quota, they get punished severely. Bica meets a very mean girl her age when she steals something from the girl’s dad. The girl calls her “Bitch” as a joke, instead of Bica, hence the name of the movie. Bica is very secretive, yet the mean girl is intrigued with her and invites her over to visit, gives her a cell phone, encourages her to become part of her street ball team. They become friends, but Bica of course, cannot reveal her secret. One of the young boys who lives with her and her “patron”, however, reveals the secret when he comes with Bica one day to hang out with her and her new friend. The story begins to unravel as her friends intervene on her behalf to release her from the grip of her “patron”. The children show their true selves as this “unraveling” takes place. Bica remains steadfast to her sense of what is “right” and what is “wrong” (despite being a theif). The little boy does the same, choosing an extreme solution to his predicament but remaining true to his feelings. While the story is simply portrayed in a very ordinary, standard manner for a feature, the content is so strong and the characters so interestingly curious, it snags you in. This is usually a topic for documentaries – homelss street children who are thieves. So to see a more in-depth story this way draws you in and snatches your heart. It makes you laugh and makes you cry, which, according to Norman Jewison, director and guest presenter at the SB Film Festival, is what makes for a good movie. Submitted by Dorothy Littlejohn