The deep bond of friendship between best friends Mari (Caroline Abras) and Caio (André Antunes) is tested often in their 10-year relationship. This is the story of its roller-coaster trajectory which at times seems to give the pair more grief than happiness, and then very cleverly has this intriguing ambiguous ending
In the beginning, in Sao Paolo, the couple are very happy and carefree but when one night they are in a club dancing and Caio kisses a boy for the very first time, his connection with Mari is never ever quite the same again.
The second part of the story (which is all told in a series of flashbacks) sees Caio some years later blissfully happy with his boyfriend who is about to become his husband. The whole marriage thing doesn’t sit well with Mari, and neither does her best friend’s state of euphoria.
By the time of the third part of their story, Mari is now living in Berlin and working decorating apartments the latest of which she also adopts as her own home. Caio, now estranged from his husband, show up in town to do some post-graduate work at a Berlin Hospital and the two soon settle back into their old routine of hanging out together. One day that takes a totally different dimension when they get ‘high’ together and end up making love. It seems that this is what Mari has maybe been angling for all these years, but what she didn’t want though, is the pregnancy that it resulted in.
Something Like That was originally conceived by co-directors Esmir Filho and Mariana Bastos as a short film, which won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival’s International Critics’ Week. They expanded it into an 80-minute feature and shot it over several years using the same two talented actors which gives the whole piece a feeling of authenticity.
It’s a fascinating look at how time shapes these two friends take on sexuality and life in general, and the lengths that they ultimately go to test their friendship. Both of them are unsure what they are searching for and whether life will ever turn out in the way they have long dreamed about, and its their sometimes frustrating journey of discovery that makes this movie so watchable.
