We laugh first at the inherent silliness of their argument; how can the manner in which the bread is stacked possibly matter? By the third time Madalena opens that cabinet door, we think the film's got nowhere else to go. But by the fifth time she boxes out Antonio's frustrated glare  Guedes brings a uniquely enchanting stubbornness to her role  we see it's more than some lame joke. It's the one moment of defiance she exerts in her otherwise hollow day, and by gum she's going to keep on doing it until she dies.

In her first feature-length film, director Julia Murat has crafted an elegant still life, with all the poignancy and observation implied. It's true that Found Memories is slow, but it would be more accurate to say the movie operates at the natural speed of that town, a ruminative amble that somehow, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, keeps moving forward. Coupled with Lucio Bonelli's lush cinematography, which relies on natural light and uncluttered compositions, the pacing somehow feels right.

The movie is set in Jotuomba, a fictional impoverished rural community in Brazil's Vale do Paraiba hit hard by the decline in the coffee trade. Its inhabitants are all senior remnants from an earlier era. There's little in the way of youth or modern technology, and the suggestion is that once these citizens pass on, no one will be left to remember what happened there.

Drifter photographer Rita (Lisa Favero) is the story's de facto catalyst. She arrives in town looking for inspiration and crashes with Madalena, converting a wing of the house into a darkroom. Rita's fascinated by old things and old people, but in an impartial, detached way that still allows her to listen to 21st-century music on her iPod. The interplay of life and death in this forgotten town is a mere novelty to her, one she plans to file away in her photo album next to her other travels.

Rita is several generations younger than everyone she meets in town, a key detail that Murat, with co-writers Maria Clara Escobar and Felipe Sholl, subtly exploit. She's fascinated by Madalena's daily bread-baking routine, for instance, and the way the villagers file neatly into church on Sundays; she snaps pictures of everyday details everyone else long ago lost interest in.

Oddly, though Rita seems set up to act as a free spirit for the town, she's largely just as stately and reserved as the rest. She communicates chiefly through her camera, which makes it hard to understand how she could impart any emotion more significant than bemusement to the townsfolk. Yet Madalena still feels a connection, perhaps due to her own fondness for still images  she pulls out yellowing photos of her long-gone husband at night.

The feeling of twilight permeates Found Memories, which doesn't feel so much like a tale of discovery as it does a eulogy. (There's even a cemetery motif.) It's the difference between telling the story from Rita's point of view and telling it from Madalena's: A less confident filmmaker might have opted for the former, for fear the latter would be too depressing to ponder.

Even as it depicts a forgotten way of life, Found Memories is already on its way to becoming a relic itself, its glacial, meditative style an anachronism in the 21st century. The film finds its language in the rhythms of routine and the slow burn of deep realizations. Even as she seems to have lost her bearings, Madalena still traces abandoned railway tracks to the shop every morning at dawn, biding her time, bread basket in hand. (Recommended)

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

BOSTON — It's blood and gore all over the place in the Boston arts scene this week. Well, more like razor wit, black comedy and red paint.

"Red"
SpeakEasy Stage Company
Calderwood Pavilion
Through Feb. 4
Better than the Broadway production.
 
Hymn to the Earth: Photographs by Ron Rosenstock
Worcester Art Museum
Through Mar. 18
Rosenstock is based in central Mass. but travels around the world taking these transporting photographs. The museum is a hidden gem. Watch the interview on "Greater Boston."
 
"God of Carnage"
Huntington Theatre Company
BU Theatre
Through Feb. 5
Two highly evolved New York couples meet to discuss their children's schoolyard fight — and get into their own fight. Uproarious, raucous and a little tragic.
 
"Carnage"
In limited release at the Kendall and Embassy theaters
Opens Jan. 13
Roman Polanski directs a slightly adapted version of the play with a terrific cast that includes Jodie Foster.
 
"Joyful Noise"
A would-be grown-up "Glee" starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton turns out to be carnage on the screen. Not recommended.
 

BOSTON — Our fascination with vampires has been deep and enduring. From the poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron to “Twilight” and “True Blood,” the vampire has been a popular muse for generations. 
 
According to Harvard Extension lecturer Sue Weaver Schopf, over 1500 novels, 500 movies and hundreds more short stories and poems have featured vampires. 
 
"It's the biggest cultural phenomenon of our time," Schopf said on “The Callie Crossley Show” on Dec. 14.
 
Schopf, who usually studies the 19th century, saw the trend and decided to design a course to encompass the breadth of vampire film and literature. She debuted the course, called "The Vampire in Literature and Film," last fall.

"One of the most remarkable things that we saw was that about 75 percent of the class was female," she said. "I think there's something there that really resonates with women." 
 
Vampires also historically been stand-ins for difficult political and cultural issues, according to Schopf.
 
"They've become a kind of metaphor for immigration in a way, for any sort of disenfranchised group, who want to come into a normal group and assimilate, to be part of that group,” she said. Many authors draw on the idea of the vampire as outsider, “the person who is different, whom you fear, who you don't want to come into the community… that's become a very powerful way of talking about our current anxieties about things like immigration, or sexual difference, or racial difference, or racial hybridity. That's what really got me interested in these books."
 
Students have gotten interested, too. Hundreds have enrolled in Schopf's vampire course, which is taught simultaneously in the classroom and online at the Harvard Extension School website.