Confessions of a Brazilian Call Girl 2011

Bruna was a girl who, sometimes because of her personality and temper, sometimes accidentally, took more wrong turns than right ones but still managed to turn out alright. And that, despite the path she set out on, is something admirable - she wanted to have control over her life, and she did it.
The movie was an overall nice one - not a great family option by any means, but I felt it didn't really exploit the character as much as I would have expected. Even the nude and sex scenes were not shocking or even distasteful, even for my rather prudish standards. So this won't cause any awkwardness should you watch it with friends or a date. Deborah Secco is an accomplished actress, and she played Bruna's transition from awkward teenage ugly duckling to a bold sexy woman to depressed addict very well. I think she was a great choice for the role, although her portrayal of Bruna at high school age was a tough buy for age alone (she was over 30 already, hard to play a 16 year old!). A thing to be mentioned is that I didn't think movie glamorized the life of a prostitute the way I would have expected it to either, though they did make it seem way easier than it probably actually was when she was working downtown for cheap before fame. Even if Bruna was cute and good at her trade, even if she liked it, surely there must have been really bad and difficult days that got to her deeper than a petty theft or a diss here and there, or even her adopted brother's scorn. Maybe it was the character's own need to put it aside to stay sane, or something else, but I wish her feelings towards her family at that time had been further explored too, although I liked how they chose to show her worst days at the peek of her popularity.
An interesting point the movie makes is why Bruna gained such popularity at first, and that's something I hadn't see prostitutes portrayed as in movies before - she was, despite all the stereotypes associated with her lifestyle, just an empathetic and genuine person who could connect with and understand people. And even after gaining more respect from men than most women get from their own husbands, she also shows herself as very insightful, saying "I was the perfect woman. I was there to fuck, to listen and to not complain about anything". Ironically, it was by gaining fame and perhaps bottling all those complaints up that she lost that empathy and become arrogant, announcing her doom and the beginning of that much needed dramatic climax that was slow in coming, but worth waiting for.
To conclude, I thought the movie was better than the hype and controversy around the time of its release allowed me to believe, and I wish I had watched it sooner.