Brazilian writer-director Anita Rocha de Silveira made her feature debut six years ago with Kill Me Please, a singularly quirky yet disconcerting cocktail of teenage sexual awakening, giallo thriller elements, and indie-film ambiguity. Her boldness extends to Medusa’s slightly larger canvas and slightly older heroines. It again offers a satirically disturbing take on issues of sex and violence among emotionally combustible young people, and this sophomore effort adds a more explicit sociopolitical critique.
The coiled-spring tension that kept Please taut despite its diffuse narrative relaxes somewhat here, making the whole less successful. Still, the audacity of de Silveira’s concept (in which students at an upmarket Christian college indulge in secret, moralizing vigilante mayhem) and her deliberately over-the-top aesthetic make Medusa a compelling mix. It may miss the mark, but not for lack of intriguing ideas or style.
Stars: Juana Acosta, Manolo Cardona, Sebastián Martínez
Fans of the previous film will immediately feel at home in a logical progression of its content, as the first few minutes feature all-girl mob violence, followed by an equally bizarre musical number. Eight young women in creepy doll-like masks chase another woman through the night streets, screaming “Whore! Jezebel! We will nail you to the cross!” They beat her, then film her forced oath to “become a devout, virtuous woman, submissive to the Lord.” Cut to a female octet, now dressed in virginal white gauze with their faces beatifically exposed, singing a religious pop song on the stage of The Holy Messiah institution. As that performance ends, followed by Pastor Guilherme’s (Thiago Fragoso) final sermon/aranga, Michele and the Lord’s Treasures excitedly look at their phones — the video of the previous night’s beating has already garnered 10,000 likes.
It’s a rather terrifying take on “Christian charity,” which Clarissa (Bruna G) suddenly finds herself in, wide-eyed, after being “rescued” by her relatives from a less elevated living situation. She’s welcomed into the home of her cousin Mariana (Mari Oliveira), who happens to be the best friend and second-in-command of queen bee Michele (Lara Tremouroux). Her school social sphere is, in reality, the stereotypical one of privileged princesses and jocks bullying everyone else. Only here the mean girls moonlight as bullies of peers deemed less virtuous, while the boys seem to be in paramilitary training for some kind of reactionary revolution, all sanctified by Jesus, or so they think.
Mariana is obsessed with Melissa Garcia (Bruna Linzmeyer), a local celebrity who disappeared years ago after being horribly mutilated for doing a nude scene in a movie, among other supposed sins. That fixation only increases when she herself is left with facial scars from a panicked woman fleeing the pious girl gang. As a result, Mariana is fired from her job at a plastic surgery clinic and hired at a different kind of medical center, where she suspects the elusive Melissa might be hiding — or comatose, like many patients there. She has a relationship with male nurse Lucas (Felipe Frazao). But he is not an appropriate object of desire for her class, and in fact, any wish carried out could potentially draw the ire of her masked brotherhood.
If “Kill Me Please” played with slasher conventions (without ever offering the standard gore or death count), “Medusa” plays with the cinematic vocabulary of near-future science fiction, with religion as its Big Brother. There is no doubt that De Silveira is addressing the rise of cryptofascism thinly camouflaged by moralizing, both in Brazil and abroad. It also becomes increasingly clear that these overwhelmingly misogynistic moves (the “boys” make no secret of blaming women for their own lustful impulses) are the obstacle their characters run toward a climactic, liberating expression of female (and feminist) rage.
But where the director’s previous effort was a bottle of mineral water shaken dangerously just before exploding, “Medusa” gets to the explosion without enough built-up tension. It’s long but thin on plot, with only Mariana really developed as a character (Clarissa is more or less forgotten after her standout introduction), and very little use is made of supporting characters. There are cleverly quirky individual sequences, such as when Michele records an instruction on social media on “how to take the perfect Christian selfie,” or the boys make a scene.
Where “Medusa” does exude assured purpose is in its design elements, which are intentionally garish, dominated by “gendered” neon colors (there’s a lot of pink and blue) that turn religious fanaticism into a tacky teen disco. Appropriately, the soundtrack is filled with synthesized covers of old tunes along with the occasional ironic plagiarism, such as a “House of the Rising Sun” reworked so the group of virgin girls can sing lyrics like “I’ll be a modest, pretty housewife.” De Silveira often seems to be nodding to the original “Suspiria,” both in dialogue and in situational and aesthetic references. This time, though, he’s not the Devil in the Details but a warped version of his hallowed nemesis.
The actors are willing, though this politicized, semi-surreal variation on “Heathers” ultimately offers most of them less defined characters to chew on than that more straightforward satire. “Medusa” isn’t exactly a sophomore flop, but it suggests its director is just one or two projects away from finding the perfect narrative vehicle for her distinctive sensibility.
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