Medusa

“Hell is a teenage girl” is a state­ment that the group of devout young Chris­t­ian women in Ani­ta Rocha da Silveira’s high­ly stylised sec­ond fea­ture would no doubt take offence at, while at the same time, would iron­i­cal­ly go to extreme lengths to cor­rob­o­rate. Singing the Lord’s prais­es by day at a neon-soaked, flashy church, and turn­ing into a vig­i­lante gang roam­ing the streets by night, this elite group of young women known in their com­mu­ni­ty as The Trea­sures is ded­i­cat­ed to vio­lent­ly attack­ing those they deem to be sin­ners and sluts. Because what bet­ter way to con­vince women to accept Jesus into their hearts than to (checks notes) …beat them into submission?

Medusa opens bois­ter­ous­ly with a long shot of a woman con­tort­ing her body as she per­forms a hyp­not­ic dance set to the synth-heavy rip­ple of Siouxsie and the Ban­shees’ ​‘Cities in Dust’. The footage is revealed to be a clip that’s being watched on a phone by a young woman who’s trav­el­ling on a bus at night, before she’s chased down by a group women don­ning white, fea­ture­less masks. Even the act of enjoy­ing a seem­ing­ly provoca­tive dance video is con­sid­ered trans­gres­sive enough to war­rant a beating.

Da Sil­veira presents a hyper-aes­theti­cised, fas­cist and fun­da­men­tal­ist soci­ety where right-wing pop­ulism mas­querad­ing as Chris­tian­i­ty holds a firm grip over a near-future Brazil­ian town. The Trea­sures are chaste; unsul­lied; mod­est, and appear­ance car­ries immense sig­nif­i­cance for them. The troupe’s leader, Michele, (Lara Tremouroux) is an influ­encer whose videos include tips such as ​“How to take the per­fect Chris­t­ian self­ie”, and Mari (Mari Oliveira) works as a plas­tic surgeon’s assis­tant. Their male coun­ter­parts, the Watch­men of Sion, are part para­mil­i­tary unit, part sports team, and spend their time engag­ing in chore­o­graphed mar­tial arts num­bers that aim to high­light their virility.

After Mari’s face is slashed by one of the gang’s vic­tims dur­ing an assault, the bare­ly notice­able scar on her cheek prompts her employ­er to ques­tion her suit­abil­i­ty for pro­mot­ing state-spon­sored beau­ty to afflu­ent clients who are sen­si­tive to any imper­fec­tions. In response, Mari decides to seek employ­ment at a clin­ic for comatose patients, where she and Michele believe that Melis­sa, a social out­cast and the inspi­ra­tion behind the Trea­sures’ mis­sion, is secret­ly stay­ing. A for­mer mod­el and actress, Melissa’s face was burned by an assailant and her enig­mat­ic pres­ence dri­ves the film’s shift into the myth of Medusa. As Mari set­tles into her new job, she expe­ri­ences a new­found awak­en­ing that prompts her to ques­tion her once-deeply held beliefs.

The film is far from bash­ful about its myr­i­ad of Bertrand Bonel­lo-isms, unsub­tle links to Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s The Neon Demon, and allu­sions to Argen­to, Car­pen­ter and Kubrick, so much so that it set­tles for a facile tra­jec­to­ry and strains to achieve a coher­ent artis­tic impact even as it ambi­tious­ly blends moods and gen­res. Its strengths and rich­ness lie more in boast­ing a potent mix of uni­ver­sal­i­ty in its rebel­lion against entrap­ment with­in soci­etal ideals of self-worth, as well as cul­tur­al speci­fici­ty and per­ti­nence apro­pos the impact that white evan­ge­lists have over the polit­i­cal land­scape in mod­ern-day Brazil.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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