Film Forum

(1971, Nelson Pereira dos Santos) “Latest News from Terra Firma.” The eponymous petit français escapes execution at the hands of his countrymen, only to find himself a captive of the Portuguese and their Tupiniquim allies, and then the Tupinambá, where he’s to live for eight moons with the tribe, before becoming a main course. In Tupi, with English subtitles. New DCP restoration. Approx. 84 min.

Reviews

“One of sharpest satires of colonial history ever made.”
– Michael Atkinson

“In the documents and ‘official histories’ of the colonial past, the focus is always clearly on the acts and deeds of the white, European colonizers, presumed to be the ancestors of present-day Brazil. It is this easy assumption that the film wishes to challenge… the film avoids any sort of facile presentation of the ‘Indian’s point of view’ on colonization… the concentration is in a sense our interest in the Frenchman. It attempts to be critical of the facile, ethno-centric response to the figure of the Frenchman as the “hero” of the film. On the contrary, as the title, How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman, it attempts to include us in his destruction.”
– Richard Peña, Brazilian Cinema