CARANDIRU

[ 1/2] (three and one-half stars)

Viva Babenco. In Portuguese, with English subTitles. Running time: 148 minutes. Rated R (brutal violence, profanity, sexuality). At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.

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‘CARANDIRU,” a powerful look behind the walls of Sao Paulo’s notorious house of detention, is the first movie in a decade from Hector Babenco, the noted Brazilian director of “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

When Babenco was successfully fighting cancer, his oncologist happened to be Dr. Drauzio Varella, who wrote “Carandiru Station,” a fictionalized account of his work in the 1980s at the prison, which was closed in 2002, a decade after a riot in which 111 prisoners died at the hands of police.

In Babenco’s version of his doctor’s book, Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos plays the sympathetic doctor who is quietly appalled at conditions in the hugely overcrowded prison.

The prison is effectively controlled by the inmates – killings, drug dealing and prison sex are everyday occurrences.

Babenco paints vivid portraits of a dozen inmates, who tell the doctor sometimes fanciful stories about their lives before they went to prison, often for murder.

Highness (Ailton Graca), a drug dealer, has two wives. Young Deusdete (Caio Blat) is reunited with lifelong friend Zico (Wagner Moura), now a hopeless junkie, behind bars.

Two armored car robbers (Fioriano Peixoto and Ricardo Blat) settle their differences, but goofball Ezequiel (Lazaro Ramos) is running up a tab in prison he just can’t settle.

The most touching anecdotes involving the aged Chico (Milton Goncalves), who attacks a guard after an unendurable taunt – and the jailhouse romance of the diminutive No Way (Gero Camilo) and his towering drag queen girlfriend Lady Di (Rodrigo Santoro, from “Love Actually”).

Extremely well-acted and staged depictions of visitors day and a prison soccer match are a prelude to the riots themselves – in which the police are seen casually slaughtering the prison population.

“Carandiru,” which ends with actual footage of the prison being demolished in 2002, marks a terrific comeback for Babenco – it’s the roughest picture of life behind bars since “Midnight Express.”