The Fever

“The fever comes and goes, like it’s got a timetable” says Justi­no (Reg­is Myrupu) in Brazil­ian film­mak­er Maya Da-Rin’s The Fever, con­fused by the inex­plic­a­ble afflic­tion that descends upon him when he finds out that his daugh­ter Vanes­sa (Rosa Peixo­to) will be leav­ing him to study med­i­cine in Brasília.

In the film, which, rather than try­ing to pro­vide easy answers to the ques­tions it rais­es, feeds off of a sense of pro­duc­tive inde­ter­minabil­i­ty and ulti­mate inscrutabil­i­ty, var­i­ous char­ac­ters receive call­ings that they are unable to ignore.

An indige­nous migrant work­er employed as a secu­ri­ty guard at the docks of Man­aus, Justi­no finds him­self drift­ing into dream states when his ill­ness hits, a switch that is not exact­ly sig­nalled with­in a film that is tonal­ly hot, hazy and fever­ish from the get-go, relent­less in its impres­sive gen­er­a­tion of mood through aggres­sive­ly atmos­pher­ic sound design from Felippe Mus­sel, and sharp, sweaty night-time cin­e­matog­ra­phy from Bar­bara Alvarez.

When called in to dis­cuss his lapsed atten­tion, a HR con­sul­tant refers to Justino’s indi­gene­ity as a ​“con­di­tion”, com­pound­ing a sense of hos­til­i­ty ini­ti­at­ed by his oth­er col­leagues’ insis­tence on refer­ring to him only as ​“the Indi­an”. If urbanised moder­ni­ty is lit­er­al­ly mak­ing Justi­no sick, why stay in the city when every­one and every­thing is telling him to go back to the rainforest?

Over a som­bre, mut­ed film that moves slow­ly and search­ing­ly, as Justino’s sit­u­a­tion dete­ri­o­rates fur­ther, the per­va­sive sense of unease already preva­lent in the film is bol­stered by back­ground news reports of a dan­ger­ous ani­mal run­ning amok in the area, feast­ing on live­stock and evad­ing cap­ture from clue­less author­i­ties who are unsure what they are even look­ing for.

As has been pop­u­lar with Brazil­ian cin­e­ma in the Bol­sonaro era, Da-Rin is work­ing in an alle­gor­i­cal mode, not offer­ing any one heavy-hand­ed mes­sage but instead thread­ing out mul­ti­ple open-end­ed under­cur­rents that offer trick­les of sub­li­mat­ed meaning.

No rea­son is giv­en for the cause of the fever, and the creature’s threat most­ly remains off-screen, but the use of ambi­gu­i­ty here doesn’t feel like a cov­er-up as it often can in fea­ture debuts, but instead the sort of sleight of hand that encour­ages view­ers to look beyond the sim­plis­tic cen­tral nar­ra­tive and think more about the con­texts that inform the sto­ry and the back­grounds of the char­ac­ters inhab­it­ing this world.

Hav­ing made sev­er­al doc­u­men­taries pri­or to this first fic­tion fea­ture, Da-Rin places empha­sis on estab­lish­ing famil­iar­i­ty with the place the sto­ry is set and the Desana peo­ple with whom it has been con­struct­ed. From this real-world research, a slip­pery, expan­sive fic­ti­tious nar­ra­tive emerges that blends ele­ments of folk­lore, his­to­ry and tra­di­tion with a cen­tral arc more ground­ed in the specifics of con­tem­po­rary lived experience.

Late in the film, when Justi­no him­self pur­sues the crea­ture, a final pay-off is refused when, after fol­low­ing some unset­tling clues that sug­gest some­thing explo­sive to come, the trail runs cold. The sug­ges­tion is that whilst Justino’s fever may come and go, and should there­fore be treat­able, the ter­ri­ble beast that has come call­ing for him may be hard­er to tame.