hair in mango yellow, the same shade that made Isaac so attracted to Lígia. Cast Matheus Nachtergaele as Dunga Jonas Bloch as Isaac Dira Paes as Kika Chico Díaz as Wellington Leona Cavalli as Lígia Conceição Camarotti as Aurora Cosme Prezado Soares as Bianor Everaldo Pontes as Rabecão Magdale Alves as Dayse (or Daisy) Jones Melo as priest Themes Writing for The New York Times, Stephen Holden interpreted the film's message as follows: "This is how the lower half lives in Brazil, and by extension, humanity at its most basic, getting along without the rose-colored protections that affluence affords." As it deals with these kinds of themes, the film was labeled as "violent". In response, Assis said that he "films life as it is". Jose Solis of PopMatters declared that "despite its sorrowful appearance, the film is a celebration of life". Assis tried to contrast the violence depicted by the Hollywood action films with the "small violences" which people face everyday, making it "poetic and violent at the same time". Bloch's character shooting corpses represents "a harmless, symbolic addiction" in the same way other aspects of the film "come from it, this violence within us". Writing in The New Yorker, Michael Sragow said that "The human content ... is the stuff of art-house exploitation." IstoÉ Gentes Domingas Person wrote that the phrase "the human being is stomach and sex", which is said by the priest in the film, is an apt summary of the film's "spirit". Writing in Diário de Pernambuco, Luciana Veras declared that the film "talk[s] about the excluded [people] who also crave the same as the characters in the [tele]novela[s], from Hollywood films or French novels: love and happiness". Assis criticized the fact that several directors like to "glamorize poverty," and as such, he characterized his characters to show the people's vice. José Geraldo Couto of Folha de S. Paulo wrote that the film shows that "the miserable are not dear waiting for the mercy of others, but are full of life, willing to kill or die to fulfill their desires and instincts". Deborah Young of Variety opined that the mango yellow color represents both "the jaundiced shade of their broken dreams" and their sense "of nonconformity and feeling alive." Background and production Prior to Mango Yellow, Cláudio Assis worked as a production director on the 1996 film Perfumed Ball and as director on three short films.