This 'Station' is even better than Grand Central

COURTESY BUENA VISTA PICTURES Boy meets woman in train station. Add Spanish, and presto - an Oscar nomination.

Weepies. Tear-jerkers. Three-handkerchief films. The problem with the clever calculation in films like these is that there is no possibility for heartfelt emotion or true-to-life characterization. How Central Station, a film whose subject is prime tear-jerker material, manages to avoid the clichés and pitfalls of its genre is a mystery to me. Amazingly, director Walter Salles and screenwriters Marcos Bernstein and Joao Emanuel Carneiro have crafted a film that skirts the edge of cheesiness, but skillfully avoids the predictability of the weepie.

Much of the credit for that goes to Fernanda Montenegro, who earned an Oscar nomination for her role as Dora, the older woman changed by her experience caring for Josue, a young, orphaned boy played by Vinicius de Oliveira. Montenegro inhabits her role with dignity and gravity that speak of eternities of experience.

The opening scenes of the film take place in Rio de Janeiro's Central Station, a public space teeming with people. Dora works here as a letter writer for the city's illiterate. Her customers include a young woman and her son Josue. Salles intersperses the scene with shots of commuters and trains barreling out of the station, creating an atmosphere of restlessness and the feeling of urban anonymity. There is no stopping the momentum; even when Josue's mother is killed by a speeding truck, the crowd only pauses momentarily to gawk before once again being swept up in the motion of the film.

When Dora realizes Josue has nowhere to go, she takes him into her home, but quickly decides the burden is too great and sells him to a woman looking for young children. She eventually takes him back and journeys with him to find his father, who is living in the country, far from the perils of the big city. Salles sets up a contrast between the hustle and bustle of Rio and the peacefulness of the countryside, where people are more willing to take the time to get to know each other. On the road, Dora and Josue meet many interesting people, including a Christian trucker whom Dora takes a shine to and a group of pilgrims at a religious festival they happen upon. After much travel, Dora and Josue arrive at the end of their journey. Whether or not they achieve their goal of finding Josue's father I'll leave a mystery, but of course, the magic is in the journey.

The relationship between Dora and Josue occasionally borders on the hackneyed, but the excellence of the acting overcomes the threat of triteness. Montenegro's performance is the glue that binds the disjointed parts of Central Station together. Her instincts as an actor assure that she performs best at moments when she doesn't even speak. In the scene following the truck driver's abandonment of Dora and Josue, Mon-tenegro's fingers clench and claw at the window before dropping to her side; without saying anything, she makes the viewer understand exactly how she feels.

Salles employs a strategy that works surprisingly well: he substitutes motion, or the lack thereof, for theatrics. Dora's discovery of the abandoned Josue in the train station functions as an inner battle rendered completely through the motions of Montenegro's head, which turns toward the boy, turns away, then turns toward him again. She gives him a long, piercing glance, as if looking into the depths of her own inertia.

Motion is a powerful metaphor in Central Station, functioning as a criticism of Rio's faceless urbanity, but later proving that constant movement is the key to survival and understanding. The journey the characters make is the journey to Dora's rebirth and renewal. What makes this new beginning powerful is that it does not ooze sentimentality. When Dora, in her final scene, reads a letter she has written to Josue expressing her love for him and begging him to remember her, her words ring powerfully, because we as spectators have spent so much time in her company that we know how thoroughly she must be moved to speak such heartfelt words.

Salles, having let his actors do the work of telling the story for him, closes with the image of Dora and Josue both glancing into their picture-baubles, separated, but reassured by the knowledge that even in a world of constant motion, there is the possibility of friendship and love. It is a fittingly touching end to this truly heartwarming film.

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