Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

This gets plaudits for its naturalism, though it all looks pretty bogus to me and not in any way transporting. In fact it was fairly dull, the story of a westerner held captive by cannibals is almost a cliché since Melville's Typee. The twist is that the man is French but the Amazonian natives think he's Portuguese and therefore fit for the pot. They keep him for a long while as an honoured captive, native wife thrown in, pending sacrifice.Production quality is amateurish and the director would better have employed a more existential approach - someone is about to get eaten, after all. The Frenchman's attitude to his situation is comical. There's nothing stopping him escaping, but he lives there quite happily up until and including the day of the banquet in which he is plat du jour.What's really missing is atmosphere. It's all shot under bright sunlight. And given the decision to sensationalise cannibalism in the title it's easy to suppose that all the nudity is done disingenuously for lurid effect - in any case, reviewers can't help going on about it. While apt for the time and place, it is a distraction to the modern viewer and the filmmakers might somehow have cut down on the number of flapping willies (the women have tiny g-strings). Well, that's a moot point, but the overall feel is hippy-ish rather than realistic.It's a bit different but nothing special.

This history plot of this movie was inspired from real facts depicted in Jean de Lery's book "Voyage en terre de Brésil" (portuguese: Viagem à terra do Brasil), which was written after what Lery himself witnessed before he left for Europe. The text which is read in the overture (in Portuguese) is a letter from Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon, the founder and leader of what should have been the "France Antarctique", a French colony in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This enterprise was made in the context of French religion wars, and there was a latent antagonism between protestant and Catholics which was brought to Rio, ending with the expulsion of several French, which left for the continent (the colony was located in an island about 1 km from land – today is the Naval College). These were the historical facts from which Nelson Pereira dos Santos started his movie, as nobody ever knows the destiny of some Frenchmen who were forced to left the island, so he made a history from this. The year of these events was 1557, as in Villegagnon's letter in the overture, and it is in Lery's book. By 1594 there was practically no more Tupinambá indians, killed many years before by smallpox and other diseases and Portuguese weapons (don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia). I've seen this movie in the big screen back in 1971, and I can tell it left a strong impression because of the nudity but most of people came to accept it first because everybody perceived a great sense of authenticity, even without any historical knowledge and that the Tupinambá's life really should have been the way it was portrayed by the director. The location of the movie was in Paraty, 1970, in a landscape very close to that of 400 years before, magnificent beaches, mountains and exuberant nature. However if you were Portuguese and felled in the hands of the Tupinambá that will not help much. A great movie, well ahead of its time and a precious and historically accurate tale about the European colonization of the then strange world of South America.

I was hardly aware of the time in history depicted in this 1971 Brazilian black comedy, however that is not to say it wasn't accessible to me because the movie makes it very clear. It's set in 16th century Brazil, where rival French and Portuguese settlers are exploiting the indigineous people as confederates in their battle to assert dominance. What is particularly interesting about the movie is that it is made by the Portuguese from the point of view of the French. The hero is a likable Frenchman, the Portuguese are barbarians, and the rest of the French are oppressive and greedy. The film's Portuguese makers are objective because when all is said and done, we see that it makes no difference whose side one takes. It's about heredity overpowered by environment in a time starkly defined by tribes. Enemies are made and perpetuated, and like so, the environmental integration never progresses.A Frenchman is captured by the Portuguese is then captured by an indigenous tribe, the Tupinambas, after they massacre a group of Portuguese. The tribe's shaman predicted they would find a strong Portuguese man to cannibalize as revenge for the chief's brother being killed by a Portugeuse musket ball. Thinking the Frenchman is Portuguese, they believe they now have one. Nevertheless, the Frenchman is granted unrestrained course of the village, is sooner or later given a wife, and assumes their accustomed appearance rather than his Western clothes, or any clothes. Another Frenchman comes to the village and tells the tribe that their prisoner is indeed Portuguese, then assures the incensed Frenchman that he will tell them the truth when the Frenchman finds a secret treasure trove that another European has hidden nearby.I found the opening scene funny, because its narration apposed with its contradictions on- screen serve as great satire, even if the movie didn't seem to want to maintain that tone very much more often. It's actually not a terribly riveting film. The bountiful, essential locale, fierce way of life and ripened native women make not only the Frenchman, but us, too, forget any threat, and we have the feeling of him as a free man. It should not be that terribly hard to escape. The cannibalism is as scarce of desire as the full-frontal nudity of the cast, suggested in lieu as the representative core of Pereira dos Santos's dry political cartoon of New World mythology and undeveloped social coherence. At any rate, this 1500s-era social commentary, shot on location at a bay with 365 islands, played almost entirely nude and almost entirely written in Tupi, encourages effective breakdown of established ways which are topical because they've repeated themselves for centuries.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos' 'Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês' (renamed 'How tasty was my little Frenchman' for its US release) is a good example of the cultural centrism and the difficulties in translation of the movement towards a new cinema. In it's realistic, non-judgmental portrayal of 16th century Brazil, Santos is able to speak for people who could never have spoken to us today. Yet the differences in culture on the natives of that land are difficult to understand through the lens in which history is written by its victors.Santos' involvement in the cinema novo style is immediately apparent, as it manifests in photographic realism. The lighting in each frame looks entirely natural (and than likely it only uses natural light) and camera movement is limited if any happened at all. Sound is clear and loud, but the near absence of post-production sound effects immerses the viewer in voices and nature. The main exception to the natural style of the film is the occasional inclusion of tribal music in the background, which use some reed-type instrument that might not be accurate for the tribal theme.The main obstacle for the viewer is a culture that they have very little concept of before the film. Unlike Hollywood films that sanitize their portrayal of native Americans with stereotypical clothing, Santos' rightly presents the native peoples' of Brazil as they were – without clothes. At times the film looks more like an issue of national geographic than a fictional story. The indifference to the tribe's practice of cannibalism not only comes from the perspective of the tribe, but even the Portugese in the film act in apathy towards it. If anything, the film comes just short of glorifying cannibalism until it justifies the act through vengeful rights. Indeed the mistaken Frenchman too accepts his place in the history of the oppressed natives, and as our protagonist he leads the audience to accepting it as well. The marriage of the tribe's woman and the Frenchman parallels Brazil's past and future, but in some ways encourages that a co-existence is possible if tolerance can be given. All of these cultural differences form a boundary to the audience that can be broken down if one can accept the history of oppression and integrate them into the themes of acceptance in the film.