In order to resist temptation, Mariana and her girlfriends try their best to control everything and everyone around them. However, the day will come when the urge to scream will be stronger than it ever has been.
“Medusa” (premiered as part of 2021 Cannes Directors Fortnight) is a supremely enjoyable sophomore feature by writer/director Anita Rocha de Silveira. Silveira’s talents are showcased by employing classic film techniques, accentuating her contemporary satirical screenplay. The story is focused on two girls, part of a glossy Evangelical Church, who push an ultra-conservative lifestyle via social media, pretty ballads, and mob violence.
The film blends genres magnificently: with neons and cinematic flair, Silveira makes nods to Carpenter, Argento, Hitchcock, and Kubrick. Donning white masks resembling the gang from “A Clockwork Orange,” Mariana (Mariana Olveira) and Michele (Lara Tremouroux), along with a group of young women, beat up any church members not behaving appropriately. The attacks are filmed and uploaded to social media for thousands of views and likes. Mariana is best friends with Michele, the blonde de facto leader of the pack. By day the pair are members of the Treasures of the Lord, a superficial all-girl band that sing surprisingly great-sounding religious hymns. The rest of the soundtrack includes riot girl music by Siouxsie and the Banshees and a religious ballad sung to the tune of The House of the Rising Sun. Their church is sectioned, according to gender and the boys, armed with batons and military maneuvers, call themselves The Watchmen of Zion. The church is led by Pastor Guilherme (Thiago Fragoso) a young and hip-dressing man that controls his flock through misogyny and manipulation.
In the nameless Brazilian metropolis that borders the Amazon rainforest, blackouts continue to ravage the city, and the church recruits new members through grooming and abductions. Mariana’s younger cousin Clarissa (Bruna G.) moves in with her family and is having a hard time adjusting to a new city. Clarissa joins Mariana’s group, clad in pink (like the Pink Ladies in “Grease”) spends most of their time gossiping about marriage, sex-positive people, and leftists. Michele shares a story about Melissa: a liberated woman whose face was disfigured when she was set on fire by a member of the church. Clarissa is haunted by the story and she’s given a white mask by Michele, a sign of acceptance and initiation.
The next night’s chase does not go well. The potential victim eludes them in a cemetery and when Mariana confronts her, her face is sliced by a broken bottle. As a result, Mariana is fired from her cosmetic sales job since her stitches do not fit into the required beauty standards of the job and blamed for being out alone at night by a sneering plastic surgeon working on her cut. Victim-blaming is as old, if not older, than the church.
Desperate for a job, Mariana ends up working at a rundown convalescence ward gorgeously nestled in the Amazon Rainforest. Inside the gothic hospital, an older woman introduces the coma patients she will be caring for. In the main room, an eerie green paint lines the wall, an unsettling impact with the comatose breathing overtaking the sound design. Learning the various coma patients’ backstories, Mariana begins to get a positive influence outside of her religious circle. She begins to care and become obsessed with a woman (wearing a white mask) who has been a patient for twenty years and happens to breathe on her own.
Director Silveira gracefully moves through multiple genres (horror, comedy, coming-of-age, neo-noir, and musicals) that make the film nearly indescribable. In the current state of Brazilian affairs: COVID has claimed half a million lives, Bolsonaro is basically an autocrat, and the country’s historic classism has negatively affected generations. Silveira most interestingly examines the cyclical contradictions of achieving liberation within oppressive systems, where there is obviously no easy way out.
Official Selection of the 2021 Festival de Cannes
