LITERATURE and cinema offer the chance for any literate, educated society in the modern world to both reflect and design positive quotidian aspects of its life. International news reports mostly emphasize the negative, especially about nations and societies outside of Europe and North America.
Meanwhile, millions of citizens in such nations and societies like tropical Brazil are 90% of the time not experiencing floods, mudslides, drug wars, military coups, crime waves, epidemics, etc. A Brazilian film like ‘DIVA’, of 2009, in 96 minutes offers an entertaining, real and funny contemporary exploration of a Rio woman’s life in Brazilian society today.
Lilia Cabral, a tender, sensitive, typically fair Brazilian of mixed ancestry is Mercedes, one of millions of educated Brazilian women who are professionals, drives a car, married young to an equally educated male professional, Gustavo, played well by Jose Mayer. They have two young sons who are already engrossed in their own interests, which leave only the breakfast and dinner table for time with mom and dad.
Life is quite ordinary, practical, un-sensational, and comfortable, despite their society’s obvious problems, as it is no doubt for millions of other Brazilians, even if they are not of such an educated professional class. Of course, there are irritants for both Mercedes and Gustavo, One of which is you do not bother many Brazilian men like Gustavo when soccer is on TV and his team is winning or losing, or when the game is in a balance and penalties are about to be shot. This is simply not the time to bother Gustavo with questions, or ask for intimate attention.
But things just happen that way. Could it be that soccer rivals the value of Mercedes in Gustavo’s eyes? Come to think of it, how many other irritants lurk beneath their stereotypical happiness.? Director Jose Alveranga Jr. and screenwriter, Marcelo Saback  build their entire film around dismantling the cliché of social bliss achieved via material satisfactions.
This is introduced by Mercedes beginning sessions with a psychoanalyst, as she realizes what she had accepted as a normal lifestyle actually denied other aspects of her personality and potential interests she had repressed or came to regard as lesser than her married life and its routine security.
Although ‘DIVA’ is placed in the genre of ‘comedy’, and it is (there are a lot of attitudes, comments, experiences, scenes, that make us laugh), ultimately, it is a film which projects an admirable and disarming refusal to mirror that embarrassing foolishness in some simplistic State policies which pop up as master-plans from time to time in ‘developing’ countries, prescribing solutions of absolute material satisfaction for the ‘masses’, indoctrinated education, paranoid restrictions, etc.
A Brazilian film like ‘DIVA’ has enough guts (not expected of such societies outside North America and Europe) to show where the pursuit of  less orthodox remedies to our social problems, are also necessary for a genuine sense of achievement and happiness. The cinematic structure of ‘DIVA’ reinforces from its beginning the role of other intellectual and socially entertaining activities which interest Mercedes, leading her and us viewers into a series of lively adventures in Brazil’s big city life.
The first scene has her looking into a contemporary art gallery, through whose windows we see an amiable crowd before multi-coloured monochromatic abstract paintings on display. This is really one of the film’s final scenes shown in advance because it signifies the integration of other forms of art which helped expand Mercedes’ consciousness and personal development long after she has amiably separated from Gustavo, who, like her, confesses as they bump into each other amicably from time to time, that his new relationships and professional interests have also been changing.
The cool monochromatic abstract paintings the crowd is excited about are not really there to provide questions about themselves everyone must answer; it is the paintings which question THEIR lives; their existence, and not they who question the meaning or value of the works. The paintings on exhibit are an inner signifier of the film’s outer ‘motion picture’ social questioning of its characters lives, and those of the film audience.
It is a romping 96 minutes of Mercedes’ transient encounters and relationships with all sorts of interesting characters who expand our tolerance and social growth. Discotheques, new young dances that provoke backaches, crazy ‘gay’ encounters, fickle but exciting younger men like Theo, well played by Reynaldo Cianecchini, who becomes her lover and shows her the original euphoric meaning of ‘pot smoking’, which she has no idea has already affected her euphoric giggling as she insists she feels nothing from its use.
They are caught smoking in their parked car by a patrolman, who decides they are two  lovers, quite happy and harmless, and leaves them alone as the scene cuts away with no clichéd follow-up of a legal charge, which some lesser film would pursue.
In another scene, Mercedes seeks advice from her fair younger sister, and as they speak, her sister’s boyfriend arrives on his motorcycle, fully hidden under his riding garb. When he removes his helmet, we recognize a totally Afro-Brazilian, with whom she gaily speeds off. However, we are jolted to feel concern when Monica, played perfectly by the vivacious blonde Alexandra Richter, who encourages Mercedes to pursue love, and dies suddenly of cancer, leaving her alone to carry on her life. She does, accepting the ups and downs of a free modern life in her exciting country.
‘DIVA’ is part of that beautiful influential community of New Wave films spawned by directors like Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, and Claude Lelouch. Modern life everywhere is more consciously enjoyable, thanks to their films.
Alvarenga’s lovely film, employing the beauty of Brazil’s enigmatic racial blends, is a joyful climax to this series of new Brazilian films which reflect the input and recognition of exploratory art in modern Brazilian society’s material, economic, and socially educated growth over recent decades.