Walter Salles is a director we trust with difficult people, especially when they have to travel together. Central Station earns our affection through its actors, even when the writing reassures us too readily.
Fi1m perspective
In Central Station (1998), Dora and Josué have little interest in making themselves agreeable to each other. She is a cynical letter-writer; he is a child looking for his father. Walter Salles lets their mutual suspicion last long enough to make the familiar prospect of growing affection worth watching. We were moved by their reluctant companionship because he allowed both of them to remain awkward, rather than asking us to like them immediately.
Salles’s documentary beginnings help explain this attention to behaviour. He made Foreign Land (1995) with Daniela Thomas, returning to that collaboration for Linha de Passe (2008). Between those films, Central Station brought international recognition, while The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) continued his interest in journeys that change the traveller. That interest also took him to the Kerouac adaptation On the Road (2012).
His handling of actors is clearest in Central Station, where Fernanda Montenegro refuses to soften Dora’s bad temper. Vinícius de Oliveira gives Josué enough hardness to stop the relationship becoming a lesson in kindness for an adult. Salles takes that resistance seriously and allows the child to be difficult company. The performers have something to work against in each other, and neither needs to become charming for the scenes to hold our attention.
The weakness is in how readily the film lets us anticipate Dora’s change. Salles shares the screenplay credit with João Emanuel Carneiro and Marcos Bernstein, and the writing sometimes reassures us before we have had time to decide what we think of her. Montenegro keeps the uncertainty alive longer than the script does. We would have liked Salles to trust that performance a little more.
His English-language work includes the less distinctive Dark Water (2005). I’m Still Here (2024) offers further evidence of his skill with performers of different generations, and gives us a reason to keep following him beyond the road dramas. For a first encounter, choose Central Station and give Dora time to be disagreeable.
Biography
Walter Salles is a Brazilian film director and screenwriter. He was born on 12 April 1956 in Rio de Janeiro.
Salles directed and wrote the story for Central Station (1998), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. His other films include Behind the Sun (2001), The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), Dark Water (2005) and On the Road (2012).
I'm Still Here (2024), which he directed, won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, the first Brazilian film to win an Oscar in any category.
