Brazillian Indie ‘The Year My Parents Went on Vacation’ a Tender Window to the World

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CHICAGO – Film is often at its best when it offers a “window to the world” or surprising and personal stories about other countries and cultures dealing with issues that life in the U.S. never imagines. “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation” is a meticulous, fascinating and tender story of Brazil in 1970 when revolution was in the air and the World Cup was the hope of bringing a country back together.

“The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”. Photo credit: IMDb

Michel Joelsas is Mauro – the 13-year-old son of Daniel and Bia Stein – who are communist revolutionaries plotting against the military government of Brazil.

On the run and forced from their home, they tell their son he’s going to stay with his grandfather in São Paulo because they are “going on vacation”.

What they don’t know as they drop the boy at his grandfather’s apartment is that the old man has just died. They drive away and leave Mauro to fend for himself. As a secular boy left in a primarily Jewish neighborhood, Mauro is reluctantly adopted by his grandfather’s elderly neighbor (Schlomo).

“The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”. Photo credit: IMDb

Mauro shares lunch with a different family every day and even makes friends with a upstairs neighbor girl (Hanna).

As the entire country prepares both for a revolution and the World Cup (Brazil is led by the legendary Péle and is favored to win), Mauro simply desires for his parents to come home.

This is mostly a sweet story of harmony and internationalism despite the turmoil surrounding the events. Brazil has a large immigrant culture and the mix of Jews, Italians and even Africans co-exist in the neighborhood and seemingly respect each other in their divergent pursuits.

The Jewish community is especially open to their lost boy. They relate him to Moses as an orphan who has floated to them among the reeds. The developing relationship between the boy and the orthodox Schlomo is especially touching.

The movie poster for “The Year My Parents Went on Vacation”. Image credit: IMDb

The two butt heads at first but poignantly learn to give the other what they each need. Importantly, the older Jews are survivors from World War II Germany and the governmental unrest causes anxiety that the boy’s presence helps to stem.

As a masterful influence among the proceedings, the World Cup interest allows everyone in the country to take a breath and cheer as one. The soccer sequences are marvelously timed in the narrative during particular times of darkness within the citizenry.

The full-throated cheers for the victorious Brazil team drown out the turbulence at the right time.

There’s a pointed scene that capitalizes on Mauro’s adaptation to his adopted neighborhood as he attends his first bar mitzvah. At the party afterward as the pre-pubescent kids are sullenly trying to dance together, Mauro spies Hanna across the room and begins a spastic rock-and-roll gyration.

The joy of movement spreads simply and cleanly through the room and offers respite to both a lost boy and symbolically a troubled country. Don’t worry if you can dance. Just get in there and dance.

By PATRICK McDONALD Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com