Charcoal

Carvão

Oldenburg Film Festival

VERDICT: A dark, absurdist farce of wicked schemes bred of hardship in smalltown Brazil reveals helmer Carolina Markowicz as a bold talent.

Surviving isn’t easy, and dignity is far out of reach, for the colourful cast of characters of Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz’s feature debut Charcoal. The offbeat, irreverent and suspenseful dark farce, which screens at the Oldenburg International Film Festival, turns on the desperate opportunism bred of relentless poverty, and heralds a bold new directorial voice in Latin American cinema. It portrays the small settlement of Joanopolis in Brazil’s southeast as a place where amorality has permeated the population, church-going having provided no comfort to alleviate their struggles, and wild risk-taking seeming the only route to even temporary relief.

In the cramped, grimy bedroom of a family home, nine-year-old Jean (Jean Costa) has been allotted the top bunk of a bed, while his ailing grandfather Firmino (Bendito Alves) sees out his last days below. The old man is at a stage of physical breakdown where his bodily fluids are hard to contain, his mobility is severely limited by the large oxygen canister he has to lug around, and any zest for existence he once had has dissipated. Jean’s parents Irene (Maeve Jinkings) and Jairo (Romulo Braga) struggle to keep the family afloat, but times are tough, and the money they earn producing charcoal from the furnace of a small factory is scarcely enough.

Submitting to God’s will is the only guidance the Church can offer. The family rejects it in favour of taking fate into their own hands, when Juracy (Aline Marta), a new nurse, proposes a shady deal. If they agree to euthanise Firmino, then his freed-up spot in the bedroom can be usurped by an Argentinian drug-lord, Miguel (Cesar Bordon), who has paid to have his own death staged and needs a place to hide out while the attention dies down. A fake bullet-hole is painted on the kingpin’s forehead and a bloody swimming-pool crime scene photographed, in a scene of surreal absurdity that exemplifies the cynicism and gallows humour of this satire. The film hits on just the right shade of bizarre, and deftly shy of bad taste, to bring a wicked sense of fun and an impudent defiance to suffering, where there would otherwise be bleakness.

Reluctantly locked away in the room, but increasingly angsty as the drug stash he’s squirreled away to feed his cocaine habit runs low, Miguel is a wildcard that shifts the power dynamics between all the members of the household in unexpected ways. Jairo, the self-declared head of the home, feels threatened by this new macho, overbearing presence, but he’s not contented to stay inside the four walls anyway, nipping out to the bar to get liquored up, or for trysts with fellow local and family friend Sergio, with whom he’s having an ongoing homosexual affair. Starved for attention by her flaky partner, and yearning for any thrill beyond the daily drudgery of holding the family together, Irene, a one-time pageant winner, eyes the new dweller through a rosy tint of romantic possibility, and heads to the salon to get her hair coloured. Jinkings, a familiar face from Brazilian arthouse festival big-hitters such as Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Neighbouring Sounds (2013) and Aquarius (2016), anchors the film with her strong presence, playing Irene as world-weary but resourceful, and not ready to give up on the spark of more fulfilling times to come. A wily observer beyond his years, Jean sees more of a role model in charismatic tough guy Miguel, who has no qualms about priming the kid for a future criminal life.

In this small town, where it’s hard to keep any secret for long, or newfound financial solvency under wraps from prying neighbours, the days of the family’s outlandish scheme are numbered. D.O.P Pepe Mendes balances a colour palate between dingy browns and strong splashes of colour, which works well for a film of both grubby realities and baroque, pipe-dream ventures.

Director, Writer: Carolina Markowicz
Editor: Lautaro Colache
Cinematography: Pepe Mendes
Cast:  Maeve Jinkings, Cesar Bordon, Jean Costa, Romulo Braga, Camila Mardila, Pedro Wagner, Aline Marta
Producers: Zita Carvalhosa, Karen Castanho, Alejandro Israel
Production Designers: Marines Mencio, Natalia Krieger
Sound: Diego Martinez, Filipe Derado
Original Score: Alejandro Kauderer
Production companies: Superfilmes (Brazil), Bionica Filmes (Brazil), Ajimolido Films (Argentina)
Sales: Urban Sales
Venue: Oldenburg
In Portuguese, Spanish
107 minutes