Abstract
The filmmaker Eduardo Coutinho inquired tirelessly the way his characters talk, their “verbal inventions” and possibilities of fabulation, grasping in this movement the complexities and modulations of Portuguese language used by several segments of the Brazilian population, present in his documentaries filmed both at open-air and studio locations. This article reviews that fundamental dimension of Coutinho’s filmwork in the light of Últimas Conversas (2015), posthumously edited by Jordana Berg, and concluded by João Salles, working from the director’s unfinished materials. Going further in his concerns about cinema, Coutinho utters in his last film the desire for recording children, identifying in them an originary moment in which words and meanings are not yet fully crystallized.
Keywords
Eduardo Coutinho; Brazilian documentary; film analysis