A film by Gabriel Mascaro
With: Denise Weinberg, Rodrigo Santoro, Miriam Socarrás, Adanilo, Rosa Malagueta, Clarissa Pinheiro, Dimas Mendonça, Daniel Ferrat, Heitor Loris, Rafael César
In the name of economic recovery, the Brazilian Government created a perennial system of compulsory vertical isolation for seniors over 80 to be confined in a colony. Teca is 77 and lives in the village of Muriti, in the Amazon, when she is surprised by the announcement of the age reduction, including her age group. Cornered, Teca makes an intriguing journey hidden from the officers amidst rivers, boats and the underworld to clandestinely try to fulfill her last dream, to take a plane ride.
Our rate: *(*)
Mascaro attempts to take up a challenge that cinema is usually reluctant to take up: to offer a major role to an elderly person, an anonymous person, to deliver a touching, hard-hitting portrait, while raising a major political question, that of our collective responsibility not to let our parents wither away, to exclude them from our society as they lose cognition or their physical health deteriorates. This noble thematic intention is matched by an equally interesting formal intention, that of envisioning a joyful life, where mysticism retains all its meaning, where dreams and projects continue to animate spirits, and where, what’s more, Mascaro allows himself to trip, literally and figuratively. Noble intentions, then, but that’s about it. These same intentions were already present in Lynch’s A Simple Story, which, while touching some viewers with its simplicity, doesn’t push the cursors far enough to delight the thurifers of the artist who has just left us. The same is true of O ultimo Azul, which invites us to spend a few good moments with its heroine, but never manages to take us any further, to impress our retinas or excite our neurons.