THERE have been plenty of old-lady detectives, including Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and An gela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher on “Murder, She Wrote.”
You’ll find out why they’re so good at it in the gentle Brazilian drama “The Other Side of the Street,” which begins as a take on Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” and evolves into something rarer – a love story between two elderly people. (It even includes a sex scene.)
This little jewel box of a movie stars 75-year-old Fernanda Montenegro, a 1999 Oscar nominee for “Central Station,” as Regina, a divorcée who becomes an amateur detective because she’s bored, nosy, more than a little self-righteous – and also very lonely.
Regina doesn’t fit in with Rio’s other senior citizens, who seem content to sit on the beach and play dominoes. (“Why don’t these old folks do something,” she says in disgust, “instead of just waiting to die.”)
To give her life some meaning, she joins a sort of neighborhood watch, the “senior service” of the local police force. She helps bust drug dealers at gay discos and even single-handedly stops a mugging.
But things get more complicated after she sees – or at least thinks she sees – a man murder his wife. After her police friends dismiss her suspicions, Regina takes it upon herself to tail the suspect, an attractive retired judge named Camargo (Raul Cortez).
Soon Camargo notices her. The two meet. He asks her on a date, and she agrees in the name of further surveillance (although her loneliness probably has more to do with it).
The last two-thirds of the movie is about their deepening relationship and how it softens Regina’s brittle shell. Along the way, she also solves the mystery, though it’s what she does with the information that really counts.
The movie’s director and co-screenwriter, 33-year-old Marcos Bernstein (who co-wrote “Central Station”), has made a mystery that isn’t suspenseful so much as realistic, in which the detective’s motivation is understandable and the story moves the way life does, instead of as a thrill ride.
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THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET
[] (Three stars)
“Rear Window” in Rio.Running time: 98 minutes. Not rated (sexual situations). At the Quad, 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.