I HATE SAO PAULO

(three stars)

In Portuguese, with English subtitles.

Running time: 89 minutes. Not rated (nudity, sex). At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, Avenue A and East Third Street. Through Sept. 21.

WELCOME to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where Daniel is one of the better-off residents of the city of 17 million people.

He has a lavish home, an attractive, high-maintenance wife and a bright young daughter. A financial trader, 40-year-old Daniel (Wolney de Assis) is whisked to work each morning in a private helicopter.

But, as we learn early on in the film “I Hate Sao Paulo,” his life is due for a radical change.

Acting on insider information, he loses everything ($4 million) in one deal.

But that’s just the start of his troubles -his wife throws him out of their house and he comes close to losing his daughter.

Then he meets a man who was a friend of his late father. The chance encounter again changes Daniel’s life, this time for the better.

Daniel had always thought his father died of a heart attack -but he learns he was one of 3,000 people killed by Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1986.

Director-writer Dardo Toledo Barros gives “I Hate Sao Paulo” -a play on the “I Love New York” slogan -an air of authority.

Little wonder, since Barros spent 15 years as a financial manager in Sao Paulo before ditching it all to go into filmmaking (just as Daniel does) and moving to New York.

Using a first-rate cast and script, combined with jump cuts and vivid shots of Sao Paulo, Barros delivers a thought-provoking message about the high price of materialism and political dissent.