Of course this Brazillian film is “vibrant and colourful” - from the opening titles on, reds and golds dominate, and there’s plenty of smoky 1930’s nightclubs, sailors, drugs and colored beads thrown in to keep the whole thing popping along. What’s missing from Madame Sata is a more structured narrative, and it does lose its way a little in the last third. Until then though, it’s fun to watch and quite rewarding, and Lazaro Ramos is sweaty and charismatic in the title role.

An uneducated descendant of slaves, Joao Francisco Dos Santos was a streetfighter/kickboxer who survived the streets of 1930’s Rio through pimping, prostitution and, worst of all, dressing an washed-up and racist lounge singer. He began his own popular cabaret act, rechristened himself Madame Sata (Sata is Portuguese for Satan), but soon after began a ten year prison sentence for murder. After his release, he became a legendary fixture of Carnivale, won the Best Costume award several times and became a Brazillian pop culture star before dying of old age in 1976.

This film concentrates on the period leading up to his imprisonment, with Joao/Madame Sata an unmistakable figure in the Rio underworld. Constantly in trouble with the police, and a little bit in love with a handsome drifter, Joao turns tricks with his flatmate Taboo (Flavio Bauraqui) and parties with best friend Laurita (Marcelia Cartaxo) whose young daughter he lovingly cares for (by the end of his life he'd been the surrogate father to half a dozen children). Joao wants to be a famous singer, in the style of his idol, Josephine Baker, but his quest for the stage becomes politicised as his enemies endlessly try to trip him up with his homosexuality and his flamboyance.

It’s an evocative snapshot, and it kind of stands up by itself, but at the end, when we read in title cards about Madame Sata’s later fame, we wish the film makers had chosen a different period of his life, or a different structure altogether. It’s good to see Joao struggling to make it big, but there’s an assumption that we know how it all turned out. Like a lot of people, I imagine, I’d never heard of Madame Sata before, and feel like I could see a second film, about the later part of his life. In this way, the film is a little like a half-finished mini-series. It’s fascinating and effective, but leaves the story half told.

Madame Sata is commendably unsentimental, but a little too remote. Even though the title character is in every scene, we don’t get a very textured impression of him at all, and every time he throws a fist or shoots someone, we just assume it’s because he’s a street tough who’s a little “crazy”. Likewise, we don’t really learn anything about his love of cabaret, or costume, beyond the fact that he’s a theatrical queen who loves applause. A little like a street parade, Madame Sata is quite entertaining, but ultimately, just passes by and disappears.