“This is a new world,” Brazilian director Lillah Halla announces joyfully in Power Alley (Levante), her film debuting in Cannes’ Critics Week. It’s a world in which female volleyball players with the CE Leste club make locker room jokes, dance naked in the shower, and challenge each other to make a “menstruation mask”. You get the idea. The coach is revolutionary because she includes a transgender player. They are young, athletic, and independent. But then again, not completely.
The best player in the group, 17-year-old Sofia (Ayomi Domenica), is announced as the main contender for a sports scholarship, on the same day she discovers she’s pregnant. The pregnancy is the product of a casual relationship, a notch above a one-night stand. “The boy with the motorbike” is how we know him. Keeping the baby doesn’t even cross Sofia’s mind, but abortion is illegal in Brazil.
The original title of the film Levante is not related to the geo-political zone of that name, but to a movement in volleyball: rising up, the moment when a player “saves” the ball. The metaphor is a constant in the film — all the girls on the team want to have fun, but also a better life. Their families share their same hope for the future.
Sofia is, of course, devastated. And, like so many women before her, she tries to get an abortion any way she can, inadvertently getting involved with the fanatical members of a sect. In her struggle, she discovers who is on her side and who will challenge the law. What is supposed to be a private choice turns into a public matter with violence expressed in many ways.
The film moves energetically, thanks to the Wilssa Esser´s swift camerawork, fast editing by Eva Randolph, and hip-hop music from Marìa Berlado y Badsista, not to mention the contagious spirit of the cast who really work as a team.
In the leading role, Ayomi Domenica makes sage use of her theater background, with minimal facial expressions and nimble movements of her athletic body.
Lilla Hallah, the director, could not avoid – or maybe she didn’t want to – the stereotypical tropes of every movie where a pregnancy is presented: a woman posing sideways in the mirror faking a baby bump; morning sickness; a pregnancy test in a public bathroom. I just hope for coming generations that some director realizes not every woman does that, at least not exactly in the same way, and that there are other ways to express her feelings and situation. This director knows she is working with an issue that impacts women and their families everywhere and that’s how she puts the film together; it is personal and political. From the furious and then supportive reaction of Sofia´s father, to the riot caused by religious fanatics, all this can really happen in a large part of the world, and the harm can only be avoided by a conscientious society.
Director: Lillah Halla
Screenplay: María Elena Morán, Lillah Halla
Cast: Ayomi Domenica, Loro Bardot, Grace Passô, Gláucia Vandeveld, Rômulo Braga,
Producers: Clarissa Guarilha, Rafaella Costa, Louise Bellicaud, Claire Charles-Gervais
Co-producers: Santiago López, Hernán Musaluppi, Diego Robino
Cinematography: Wilssa Esser
Production Designer: Maíra Mesquita
Editing: Eva Randolph
Music: Maria Beraldo With the participation of Badsista / Juçara Marçal
Sound: Ruben Valdés,
Production companies: Arissas (Brazil), Manjericão Filmes (Brazil), In Vivo Films (France), Cimarrón Cine (Uruguay)
World sales: M-Appeal
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
In Portuguese
99 minutes
