As governments around the world grow bigger and increasingly feel entitled to encroach on citizens’ personal lives and rights, the Orwellian vision that has animated Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro’s films seems not as unimaginable as it used to be.
Set in a near future where those over 75 are rounded up in “wrinkle wagons” and forcibly deported to remote colonies for the elderly, The Blue Trail (O ultimo azul) explores current attitudes toward the weakest members of Brazilian society behind a shield of fantasy. Following in the sci-fi/fantasy footsteps of the director’s last two films, Neon Bull and Divine Love, Mascaro and co-screenwriter Tibério Azul once again choose the path of heightened reality to attack social inequality. The film’s strong stance in favor of personal freedom, against ageism and for the power of women should help audiences forgive a general lack of narrative excitement.
The opening scenes have a Big-Brother-is-watching tone that is chilling as well as mocking. Tereza, a 77-year-old factory worker with long gray locks, returns home to her wooden shanty on a tributary of the Amazon to find giant golden laurels nailed festively over her door. They are followed by the presentation of a gold medal, again a government homage to celebrate her venerable age. The next day she is dismissed from her job and briefly told to report to the municipal authorities with her daughter. There she is ordered to a transport area for relocation to a retirement community.
Tereza, who raised kids as a single mom and worked two jobs all her life, feels fine and doesn’t want to go to the colonies from which no one ever returns. But everyone appears to be in cahoots against her. Her daughter is to receive a monthly check to ensure her cooperation, the police will make sure she gets on the bus, she can no longer buy bus or plane tickets without her daughter’s authorization, and snitches are everywhere in case she tries to hide. It looks like retirement prison is her only option. But Tereza is much smarter and cooler than she first appears.
Veteran actress Denise Weinberg brings a grouchy, down-to-earth appeal to the role of the rebellious woman society wants to forget, making Tereza’s spontaneous resistance plausible and worth a cheer. When handed a thick pack of diapers she doesn’t need by a social worker, she uses them to pull a fast one over the bus driver and disappears into the night. Her ability to think fast and keep a straight face saves her time and again as she goes on the run, seeking a last fling of freedom before she’s put out to pasture.
She would like to fly on an airplane, for instance. As this wish bubbles to the surface of consciousness, Tereza sets off to make it happen.
Brazil’s Amazon region makes a visually and symbolically impactful backdrop to the rest of the film. Unable to travel in normal ways, she bribes a young man with a river boat, Cadu (star Rodrigo Santoro), to take her upriver to a field of ultra-light planes, but things start to go south even before they get there. Santoro is hard to recognize in his unwashed, unkempt state as a broken-hearted river bum, but he springs to life after tripping on the blue slime of a rare snail, said to reveal the future to adepts.
Tereza’s other notable meeting is with “the Nun”, a happy-go-lucky elderly woman who owns her own river boat and earns a good living selling digital Bibles to the simple folk along the river (she herself, she tells Tereza, doesn’t believe in God). Her big reveal, however, is how she has “bought” a certificate that keeps her out of the old folks’ colonies; as she explains, the rich don’t follow the same rules as the poor. Miriam Socarras is sheer genius in this laid-back role.
Working with a new D.P., Guillermo Garza, Mascaro pulls away from the hot psychedelic neons that so strongly characterize Neon Bull and Divine Love, replacing their abstraction with the luscious greens of nature and watery hues of the mighty Amazon. Banishing the predictable panorama shots (apart from some stunning overhead shots of the serpentine river), he selects a homey square frame to bring human beings closer together. The ironic beat of Memo Guerra’s sassy music score adds character.
Director: Gabriel Mascaro
Screenwriter: Gabriel Mascaro, Tibério Azul
Producers: Rachel Daisy Ellis, Sandino Saravia Vinay
Cast: Denise Weinberg, Rodrigo Santoro, Miriam Socarras, Adanilo
Cinematography: Guillermo Garza
Production design: Dayse Barreto
Editing: Omar Guzman, Sebastian Sepulveda
Music: Memo Guerra
Sound design: Maria Alejandra Rojas, Arturo Salazar
Production companies: Desvia (Brazil), Cinevinay (Mexico) in association with Quijote Films (Chile), Viking Film (Netherlands)
World sales: Lucky Number (France)
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In Portuguese
86 minutes
