Review: THE BLUE TRAIL

Brazil in the near future. The old get their houses marked with alloy laurel wreaths. Then they get sihpped off to "colonies". No one comes back from a colony. Tereza, seventy-seven, is doing fine, thanks all the same, is put into the custody of her daughter who is less than pleased to accept the burden. One thing Tereza wants to do before death is fly in a plane. As her documents card just leads her back to her daughter's blocking, she goes off grid, bribes a riverboat man to take her where she can bribe a local to take her in an Ultra Light. This story, even if she does get up in the air, is not about the destination.

This satire on what the future of the aging population might look like is happy to take things slowly and let the lessons fall gently. Tereza discovers much that her shrinking life in the village was keeping hidden about life in the greater world. The title refers to a rare snail that secretes a blue liquid as its trail. Folklorically, a drop of that into each eye will produce visions of the future. It only ever seems to give people bitter trips of bad things that happened in the past. That's funny both times we see it and it's not hard to plug it into the story's overarching theme of the hazards of escape.

What we see of the colony is the reduction of the old to cattle. They are required to wear incontinence nappies whether they need them or not. They are strapped into their transport seats with what look like restraints rather than safety devices. Tereza used to work in a crocodile butchery. At the start of the film we see the baby crocs flowing down water slides before we see their caracasses on hooks getting trimmed with circular saws. The recalcitrant old are trussed up in cage-backed vehicles for forced transport to local police stations.

Then again, while her featurelessly routine life in the village is reduced to existing through each day and year without event, as soon a Tereza's adventures begin on the river and she variously finds contentment and disappointment, we are compelled to wonder why she couldn't have just done something comparable before the threat of incarceration. I know, plots drive on conflict and crisis, but perhaps the easy inclines of the story's timeline points might have benefitted from a few more peaks. 

I say this mainly from my admiration of Denise Weinberg's charismatic performance at the centre as Tereza. Nothing gets past her and when she is placed in front of the hurdles and failures along the journey you know the cogs and sparks are flashing behind those strong eyes. This is not a film of intense dialogue, it is far more a visual feast, but then she might have been given more licence to act without words. 

This is hard to say for sure as the film has good performances that feel independent of the director. That is my problem, if any, with this modestly eight-six minute fable, we feel like more fable. Funnily enough, I am, for the second year in a row, avoiding my usual winter holiday with MIFF and just taking a week off. This movie felt exaclty like the kind of thing I would have chosen to get in another movie at the Forum. Glad I saw it but wouldn't have missed it.