"O Lobo Atras da Porta" (A Woolf at the Door)

Fernando Coimbra's child abduction drama can feel clunky and overambitious, but gathers steam and displays considerable drive as it progre

Truth comes in multiple layers in tyro helmer Fernando Coimbra’s child abduction tale, “A Wolf at the Door.” That’s because the two main characters are slow to reveal everything, protecting themselves as long as possible before the real story is forced to the surface. Coimbra’s overambitious use of a complex narrative structure can feel clunky, and worst of all, the kid at the center is practically forgotten in the assemblage of flashbacks, significantly diminishing the emotional pull. Nevertheless, the pic gathers steam and displays considerable drive, even if it can’t quite shake the feel of a good TV movie.

Someone picked up 6-year-old Clara (Isabelle Ribas) from school, and it wasn’t her mother, Sylvia (Fabiula Nascimento), or her father, Bernardo (Milhem Cortaz). The detective (Juliano Cazarre) suggests the perp could be known to the family — perhaps Bernardo has a disgruntled lover? Reluctantly, he admits he was seeing Rosa (Leandra Leal) for about one year, even suggesting she’s the likely perp, so she’s hauled in for questioning.

 

Rosa initially denies any involvement, but under pressure claims to have taken the girl on instructions from someone else. Her story doesn’t really add up, and the detective (characterless) has to sift through distorted levels of perception before Rosa, as the woman scorned, finally cracks and reveals the whole chilling truth.

  

Certainly in terms of plot, Coimbra has it all figured out, yet Rosa’s febrile, almost “Fatal Attraction”-style resolve to hurt Bernardo would have seemed more persuasive had he been a more compelling lover worthy of her passion. It probably doesn’t help that “Wolf at the Door” is showing up at around the same time as “Prisoners,” one of the most critically acclaimed kidnapping pics in a long time. The parents’ desperation, so disturbingly caught in that film, is all but absent here, as the director is far more interested in coming up with a reason for such a heinous crime than he is in its affect. Consequently, Sylvia is the one appealing figure, thanks in part to Nascimento’s warmth.

 

Visuals keep the center of attention tightly focused, hiding faces or marginalizing characters such as the detective as if they’re merely incidental to the story. Lensing by leading Brazilian d.p Lula Carvalho (“Elite Squad”) maintains a cool tension that does more to grip the emotions than the repetitive flashbacks. “A Wolf at the Door” received the top award in San Sebastian’s Latin Horizons section.

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“A Wolf at the Door”- a hot and surprising Brazilian thriller.
It’s a kidnapping mystery in which a police inspector tries to figure out who might have picked up a child that wasn’t her own from a Rio de Janeiro school.
The mother of the little girl, Sylvia (Fabiula Nascimento) is frantic. The school teacher is weepy and apologetic, full of excuses and one interesting clue.
“But Clarinha (the daughter) RAN to her,” she says (in Portuguese, with English subtitles), of the mysterious kidnapper, who called herself “Sheila.”
Then Bernardo (Milhem Cortaz), the father, arrives. He’s sure he knows who did it. Great, now we’re getting somewhere. Who? His “crazy” mistress, a beautiful 25 year-old who was somehow charmed by this toothy bus-driver.
“Rosa.” She’d left him a strange message, set up a rendezvous. We’ll meet her, you arrest her and I’ll get my daughter back
“Men do things like that,” Bernardo says, shrugging off the affair to the cop (Antonio Saboia). “They’re — you know, unavoidable.”
“No, I don’t know,” the cop says with a glower. 
The cop is quiet and patient, but blunt. He doesn’t like incomplete answers, and when Rosa doesn’t make the rendezvous, he turns more blunt. What are you two not telling me?
In further interrogations, broken up by flashbacks which take us to how Bernardo met Rosa, the story begins to make sense, only to change directions with the next interrogation/flashback.
“A Wolf at the Door” (in Portuguese, “O Lobo atrás da Porta”) only gets serious about unraveling the mystery after the police bring Rosa in. Cleverly played by Leandra Leal, she is by turns confident and defiant, weepy and confessional. Yes, she took the kid. No, she doesn’t have her. 
A fourth suspect is mentioned, maybe a fifth, as the cop questions each of the three people in the police station, in turn. The plot thickens, after the inevitable “Is there anything you’d like to add?”
There are lies and more lies, guilt that seems to spread far and wide as the tale unfolds. Writer-director Fernando Coimbra sets us up for a handful of possible scenarios, teasing out what might have happened, where the solution to the mystery might lie.
He unwisely abandons the interrogations-interrupted-by-flashbacks format — full of nervous close-ups, often hiding the inspector asking the questions — and settles into an hour long, out-of-order flashback. That robs the story of its urgency. There is a missing child, after all. The cops, in better thrillers like this, have a hint of panic in them as well. The movie’s energy never flags, but it never rises to the level of pulse-pounding, either.
Filmed in a sun-baked Rio of working class neighborhoods, performed by players who don’t give the game away, “Wolf” relies more on surprise plot twists than the standard “ticking clock” of Hollywood thrillers. And there are stunning turns, a few that will make your jaw drop.
The sex, the violence, the threats and violations spread far and wide and envelop these three people. And the morale of the tale is clear, almost from the first to the last. Lies have consequences. If you’re feckless and not careful about it, your lies are what bring that wolf to your door
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