It's true that Madame Sata, a passionate new Brazilian film about a true-life legendary drag queen, contains a few lively dance numbers and a healthy dose of flamboyance. But this energetic and life-affirming film is anything but the usual camp-fest we've come to expect from the topic. Instead, it's a rich character study of a masculine, angry, passionate man whose "rage for just being alive" grew to legendary proportions of crime, tragedy and re-birth in a corrupt and high-living Rio de Janeiro over a half century ago.

Directed by Karim Ainouz, with a flair for color and energy, set in the violent and artistic quarter of Rio, circa 1930s, Madame Sata is the story of Joao Francisco dos Santos (Lazaro Ramos, dazzling), a proud black man struggling to create a life in the post-slavery world of Brazil. He is a sexual and societal outlaw living on the dark fringes of a dangerous world.

Masculine, gay and supremely intelligent, his magnetism attracts the interest of handsome young thief Benito (Felipe Marques), nicknamed "the Indian prince," and they embark on a graphic affair. Joao also lives with a loving and eccentric, non-traditional family composed of a woman, her baby and their best friend, a flamboyant gay prostitute. The weaving together of this well-written and likable ensemble is dramatically compelling and generates a true sense of people connected by their exclusion from society, making their own rules and honor-codes, finding connection and loyalty.

Madame Sata is alive on so many levels, and the script is intelligent and loaded with lines that are pure passion: "I was born an outlaw, and that's how I'll live"; "My angel, the bell tolls and the night cries-flee this stinking world"; "What do you want? I want the world." The literate screenplay daringly paints the picture of an unapologetic, commanding and unorthodox character living in an unforgiving time and place.

It's a testament to the craft of the screenplay that all four characters emerge as dimensional and human, where a lesser film would reduce them to adjective-driven character descriptions. There's real heat and passion in the love scenes, and there's warmth and caring in the family. That the angry, principled and headstrong Joao will eventually end up in deep trouble with the law is evidenced in the film's striking opening scene, and revisited later in a major personal setback that lands him behind bars before he re-emerges triumphant and re-invents himself as Madame Sata.

Based on Cecile B. Demille's film Madame Satan, this incarnation leads to some of the most festive and exciting drag scenes ever put on film. I hesitate to even call them drag scenes, because they are truly just some great musical and dance numbers, regardless of sexual politics. Madame Sata is no mere campy joke but as embodied by Ramos, a dynamic entertainer with a flair for the exotic and a true talent for showmanship that dazzles. It's easy to see why the real Madame Sata became a national legend and whose reputation endured a half-century to the creation of this film.

The lead performance of Lazaro Ramos is quite remarkable. Where many films are content to define their characters by their behavior in relation to a threadbare plot, this is so well written that

many dimensions - from lover, performer, paternal protector, killer, best friend and self-respecting man - all fully shine in the film.

Madame Sata is not for every taste, and it's certainly graphic in its take on sex and violence. But there's great poetic passion and joy in the film, driven by Ramos' star turn in the role, and his rowdy, near-perfect portrait of fully integrated, masculine-feminine human being.

Madame Sata was deservedly awarded the 38th Annual Chicago International Film Festival's prestigious Golden Hugo Award. It's rich, compelling experience that offers a vital and raunchy depiction of an era and an individual who triumphed over its restricting limitations.