A major film by fantastic Brazilian director Nelson Pereira dos Santos, based in a novel by Brazilian grat writer Jorge Amado. It brings a deep, moving and even engaged story, with a lot of Bahian culture (from Northeastern state of Bahia) and serious social political issues (racism, poverty, patriarchy, aristocratic hipocrisy, prostitution exploitation, police violence, oppression against working class...). They are shown with perhaps the most beautiful transitions in the history of cinema. In some of them, Baldo adult goes back to childhood, as that boy has never gone out despite all the suffering. Love melodrama is also intense, poetic, and quite uneasy. It is one of the best representetions of African-Brazilian religions in cinema too. Capoiera, boxing, circus... it is a film about many things, all of them well connected in an amazing but also harshly realistic story.