To this day, Love Strange Love remains a Rorschach test. Does it exploit a child actor, or does it denounce the exploitation of minors? Is it a high-brow art film dressed in cheap clothes, or a porno disguised as social criticism? Even its lead actress, Vera Fischer, has publicly criticized Xuxa for trying to bury the film, accusing her of harming Brazilian cinema. Xuxa, for her part, has stated she suffers from the association with pedophilia, calling it "fake news" with a "touch of cruelty," as she argued in interviews about the documentary of her life.
Director Walter Hugo Khouri was known for using erotica to explore deeper psychological and emotional fragmentation. Rather than a cheap exploitation film, critics noted that Amor Estranho Amor was a highly stylized, dreamlike, and somber meditation on memory and childhood trauma. It drew stylistic comparisons to Louis Malle’s Pretty Baby and Murmur of the Heart .
: Played Anna, the boy's mother and a high-society prostitute. Amor.Estranho.Amor.-Love.Strange.Love-.1982.VHS...
: Because the film could not be shown on TV or in theaters, the original VHS tapes became the only way for cinema buffs to view Khouri's work.
: Xuxa played a young woman in the film and appeared in a controversial scene with the child protagonist. As her career shifted toward children's entertainment, she spent years in legal battles to prevent the film’s distribution. To this day, Love Strange Love remains a Rorschach test
: A young Hugo is sent to live in a mansion/brothel run by his mother, Anna (Vera Fischer). The film uses his perspective to explore the intersection of adult sexuality and childhood innocence. The "Strange" Love
To understand Amor Estranho Amor , one must look at the landscape of Brazilian cinema in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Even its lead actress, Vera Fischer, has publicly
While never officially banned by the federal government, the film became functionally illegal to distribute in Brazil due to civil litigation. For decades, TV networks and home video distributors were legally forbidden from showcasing it.
: Because Xuxa successfully blocked commercial releases for decades, the film survived primarily through bootleg VHS copies and low-quality digital rips. This "forbidden" status turned it into a piece of Brazilian pop culture "lost media."
"Amor Estranho Amor" was well-received by critics and audiences alike, and it is considered one of the most important Brazilian films of the 1980s. The movie's exploration of complex relationships and social dynamics resonated with viewers, and it has since become a classic of Brazilian cinema.
Between 1991 and 2018, Xuxa embarked on an unprecedented campaign to erase the film from public existence. She paid around R$ 345,000 annually to the producer, Cinearte, to prevent the film's distribution and to buy up existing VHS copies. This was not a voluntary withdrawal. Court records show she won a legal injunction in 1991 from a young judge named Luiz Fux (who would later become President of Brazil's Supreme Court), forbidding its sale. For almost three decades, the only available copies were a handful of rare VHS tapes released by CIC Video that slipped through the dragnet, quickly becoming collector's items for the price of gold. The film became a ghost, its reputation preserved only by rumor and a poor-quality English dub found on underground torrents.