Mango Yellow

A wildcat of a film guaranteed to shock even jaded viewers, Claudio Assis’ debut feature “Mango Yellow” is a provocative tale of low-rent losers set in the coastal town of Recife, Brazil. Like characters out of some Carnival hell, a macho butcher and his born-again wife, a forlorn barmaid, a sinister sadist and the gay manager of a flophouse called the Hotel Texas run in and out of each other’s lives in a film as sloppy, sluttish, scruffy and vital as they are. Though pic struggles to reach a meaning beyond its own shock value, it has the kind of in-your-face transgressiveness that should fit the bill at festivals looking for original Brazilian fare…