MIFF Session 1: TOLL

Suellen is a single mother, fending for her young adult son Tiquinho but griding her gears over his burgeoning queerness. She works shifts at a tollbooth, arguing change from fresh old men and bitchy older dowagers in the traffic. When she discovers her boyfriend Arauto is a thief (bag of heavy watches he hid in her room) she casts him out. Her work colleague Telma, who trades sex for toll clearance, is disgusted by the flamboyant Tik Toks Tiquinho has been posting, recommends a gay conversion program. Suellen is interested but the cost is steep. She calls Arauto. They work it out.

The description melodrama is perennially stained with stigma, giving rise to images of histrionic personifications of good and evil. All it really needs to mean is that the question of morality is pushed to the centre. Carolina Markowicz's solid verite film is a melodrama about life below the line in contemporary Brazil and keeps the performances on the right side of natural. The press of "have" over "have not" is clear in the thick ochres of the landscape and fluorescent white of the workplace. A mob boss's smile on hearing an excuse from a drone player last for seconds but tells chapters. These are performances set in a palpable reality.

Yes, the toll of the title spreads into Suellen's life and practice. She seems more superstitious than religious but her determination to cure her son of unmanliness brings her to a place below her own moral radar. The scenes of the program with its achingly laughable class activities and self-deluded bullshit bring home not so much her own delusion but desperation. This film does not quite go where you expect. There are no sudden and refulgent revelations but the final moments suggest something profound has been put before us.