The good-but-not-great 1991 Brazilian thriller A GRANDE ARTE is also known as HIGH ART, KNIFE FIGHTER, THE KNIFE and, most commonly in the English-speaking world, EXPOSURE. An adaptation of a 1983 novel by Rubem Fonseca, it was the feature directorial debut of Walter Salles, who went on to helm popular arthouse items like CENTRAL STATION (1998) and THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES (2004).
EXPOSURE was also the first of several nineties-era appearances by the veteran Hollywood supporting actor Peter Coyote in non-American art films (others included BITTER MOON and KIKA). He was joined by Luc Besson regular Tcheky Karyo and British starlet Amanda Pays (both of whom, like Coyote, were once guarantors of international funding) in what was wrongly heralded as the start of a Brazilian cinema renaissance.
Peter Mandrake (Coyote) is an American photographer (as opposed to the novel, in which he was a Brazilian lawyer) stationed in Rio. After learning of the murder of a prostitute acquaintance (Giulia Gam) at the hands of a pair of knife-wielding lunatics, Mandrake is brutalized by the two men, who are after that quintessential nineties movie MacGuffin: an incriminating floppy disk. After recuperating Mandrake elects to get revenge, and asks a French drifter named Hermes (Karyo) to train him in the art of knife fighting. Hermes not-unwisely advises Mandrake to buy a gun, but he persists, and Hermes goes through with the training, much to the upset of Mandrake’s British girlfriend (Pays), who dumps him.
Mandrake tracks his attackers to Bolivia via train, upon which a female federal agent is killed. More deaths occur when one of the baddies sprays a crowd, whose ranks include Mandrake, with machine gun fire (EXPOSURE’S bad guys, in common with those of most nineties movies, are extremely reckless and extraordinarily unskilled in the handling of firearms). They’re still after the elusive floppy disc, and about to allow Mandrake to finally put his knife-fighting skills into action.
This film begins as a tightly contained noir potboiler, only to morph into a mini-epic that offers a highly scenic tour of early nineties South America—a dynamic foreshadowed by a dazzling backwards pan out of a hotel room that turns into a panoramic depiction of the surrounding city (much better pulled off than the similarly conceived concluding shot of WORKING GIRL). Other impressive visual coups occur in a handheld depiction of train-surfing, in which teenagers ride atop a speeding train to “defy death,” and the climactic knife-fight, which is intense and eye-openingly bloody.
What keeps the film from greatness is 1). The use of superfluous expository narration in the English version (scripted by Matthew Chapman, writer-director of the 1983 Peter Coyote starrer STRANGER’S KISS), 2). The uneven emoting, with Coyote delivering a solid performance to which the rest of the multinational cast fails to measure up, and 3). The synthesizer-heavy, punctuation-minded score, with the most memorable music cues being the Philip Glass excerpts (taken from the Glass opera THE PHOTOGRAPHER) that play over the opening scenes.
Vital Statistics
EXPOSURE (a.k.a. A GRANDE ARTE, HIGH ART, KNIFE FIGHTER, THE KNIFE)
Alpha Filmes
Director: Walter Salles
Producer: Alberto Flaksman
Screenplay: Rubem Fonesca, Matthew Chapman
(Based on a novel by Rubem Fonseca)
Cinematography: Jose Roberto Eliezer
Editing: Isabelle Rathery
Cast: Peter Coyote, Tcheky Karyo, Amanda Pays, Raul Cortez, Giulia Gam, Paulo Jose, Eduardo Conde, Rene Ruiz, Tonico Pereira, MIguael Angel Fuentes, Cassia Kiss, Iza De Elrado, Tony Tornado, Eduardo Waddington, Alvaro Freire, Maria Alves, Pete Marchetti, Katia Bronstein