After the high school girls of his previous feature film, Check me out for favor (2015), the Brazilian filmmaker Anita Rocha da Silveira seems to confirm her taste for group portraits of girls, here barely out of adolescence. medusa describes the journey of Mariana, who joined what seems to be a mixture of militia and fundamentalist Christian sect. She participates in prayer meetings under the authority of a pastor with dubious political ambitions and, at night, with her comrades, she brutalizes young passers-by considered “deviant”.
All are promised to men themselves members of the small group. Mariana is entrusted with the mission of going in search of a young model whose face has been burned with acid in order to take her picture and make public the punishment reserved for women “of bad life”.
Demonstration ideology
The real, that is to say the days of work that she spends in a hospital, suddenly invites itself into her life and takes the form of an attractive nurse’s aide. Little by little, this meeting will contribute to disrupting things.
The filmmaker has opted for a kind of stylization for what turns out to be a vibrant anti-Bolsonaro firebrand. Flashy lighting, primary colors, nightclub atmosphere, various fetishes (the masks of the zealots during their punitive expeditions) characterize a work that ultimately follows a long-awaited path, overcome by the ideology of demonstration as it is. will embody in a final scene.
Brazilian film by Anita Rocha da Silveira. With Mari Oliveira, Lara Tremouroux, Joana Medeiros (2 h 07).