Maintenance | “Missão Cupido was to be played by Fábio Porchat”, reveals director Rodrigo Bittencourt

Kicking off this year on Valentine’s Day, Mission Cupid isn’t so much a romantic comedy as it is a surreal comedy sketch, in which Deus (Rafael Infante) is the director of an insurance agency whose clients are humans and angels. are its employees, who ensure life on Earth. . After a long wait on the schedule, the film – shot between 2017 and 2018 – entered the circuit and competed for space with Summon Evil 3 – Order of the Devil and the national comedy Who Will Stay With. Mário? With the arrival of Fast and Furious 9, this Thursday, there was no more room.

Read also: Criticism | Mission Cupido – Brazilian indie comedy starring Victor Lamoglia is so messed up it makes you laugh

CinePOP, however, had an exclusive conversation with director Rodrigo Bittencourt, during which the filmmaker revealed several peculiarities of the film, one of which could help the film stay in theaters longer. Co-produced by Paramount Pictures, the director boasts of being an eclectic professional, see his works Totally Inocentes (2012), with Fábio Porchat at the head of the drug trade, and Real – The Plan Behind History (2017), Brazilian politics à la Rent Chiens (1992), by Quentin Tarantino.

Cinephile references

In Missão Cupido, cinematographic references flood the screen and we see how much the director likes to pay homage or show his film-loving taste to the spectators. “The seventh seal [de Ingmar Bergman, 1957] is the movie of my life. I wanted to do a scene like this in Real – The Plan Behind the Story, but that didn’t happen, so I left it for the next one and now the metaphor of playing chess with death, which is a very small scene, I could not be outdone, ”he says, the director who is also a musician.

Other films evident in the composition of the scenes are Kill Bill vol. 1 and 2 (2003/2004) and Sin City – The City of Sin (2005), others were removed in the final cut. “There was a car accident scene between Rita (Isabella Santoni) and Miguel (Lucas Salles), from the movie Se Meu Fusca Falasse (1968). Then we should put it on YouTube ”. He also claims to have performed scenes with a Woody Allen imprint. Will the public notice it?

The main idea

Despite the mixture of several references and genres, Bittencourt defines that the main message is a metaphor for the connection between death and life. “We cannot fear death, because we also fear life. The character of Agatha Moreira, death, then falls in love with life, Rita, who is a feminist woman ”.

Produced by Clélia Bessa, de Como Ser Solteiro (1998) and Copa de Elite (2014), Rodrigo admits to having written the screenplay on his own, but thought he suffered the prejudices of the female audience for being a man and having made a film about women. After all, comedy is not pro-feminism, on the contrary, the main character played by Isabella Santoni exaggerates the stereotype of the boring feminist. She also doesn’t look like the same actress who shines in Amazon Prime’s DOM series, released on June 4.

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“I thought I was going to be prejudiced by women because I’m a man and I made a film about women.”

It was supposed to be the backdoor, but it looked like Parafernalha

In fact, finding the perfect cast wasn’t easy, and plans changed course halfway through the production process. “I shot Fábio Porchat’s first film, Totally Inocentes, we made our film debut together. We had planned to do the Mission Cupid together, which was called Stupid Cupid, there was even an article in O Globo, saying he was writing with me. Lie! Did not write a line. We had planned to do it together, but with 45 minutes into the second half he couldn’t do it anymore. I rewrote the whole script, and then yeah, thinking about Lucas. “

Rafael Infante and newcomer Agatha Moreira were one-off choices that worked, but protagonist Isabella Santoni barely got into the project. Bittencourt remembers: “I called her specially to play Rita. She said: “but Rodrigo, I don’t see myself in the character”. I said, ‘But what do you mean? You are very alive, I need a living Rita. You like that surf thing, get up early, the sun, you’re totally alive. You have to make the movie. She then agreed to do so. I had written to herself ”.

“I love romantic comedy. I want to do a lot of romantic comedy in my life.

With Lucas Salles, Victor Lamoglia – who lived an angel in Nobody Tá Olhar (2019), Thais Belchior and Daniel Curi, Missão Cupido became a meeting of comedians from Parafernalha, an internet comedy channel founded by Felipe Neto. Although he worked with the youtuber at Multishow, Rodrigo Bittencourt says the meeting of the actors of the YouTube channel was not intentional.

See also: EXCLUSIVE | “Mission Cupid is a collective epidemic”, Lucas Salles in an interview with CinePOP

“I didn’t know Daniel Curi was from Parafernalha, because I don’t watch the channel, but his character was actually three years old. There were three cherubs, one he lived in and the other two YouTubers, but it didn’t work out. “What’s the reason?” The YouTubers couldn’t make the movie, we were rehearsing and they couldn’t get into the movie. character and focus. To say a nice word, they were very excited. I won’t tell you who it was so as not to hurt the boys. I had to get them out of the movie, it was the first time I had to fire people in my movie. It was awful. “

“Mission Cupid is the loving interweaving of life and death.”

Past waters. He doesn’t reveal who the fired YouTubers were, but they were certainly no longer members of Parafernalha. Like any project, the making of Mission Cupid has seen its ups and downs, it took a long time to reach the theaters and it took a few seconds to get out. The mission now is to reach audiences through new streaming platforms. As this is a Paramount Pictures co-production, maybe we can expect it at ParamountPlus.

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