TIFF Coverage: MEDUSA

Written and Directed by Anita Rocha da Silveira
Starring Mari Oliveira, Lara Tremouroux, Joana Medeiros, Felipe Frazão, Thiago Fragoso, Bruna G, Bruna Linzmeyer
Runtime: 127 minutes
Premieres at TIFF on September 15th

by Gary M. Kramer, Staff Writer

Medusa opens with a group of young Christian women in Brazil—“The Treasures” as they are known—hunting down and attacking a female sinner both verbally and physically. Wearing masks, they urge their victim to “promise to accept Jesus,” and be a devout, virtuous woman, like they are. The irony of literally beating this message into someone is dryly amusing.

But writer/director Anita Rocha da Silveira does not quite know what to do with this juicy premise. The film’s tone is satiric, but the points she raises about women’s rage and oppression, as well as Christian doctrine, lack bite. Instead this allegorical film offers some neon-lit images, and a moody soundtrack. (There is a fantastic electronica cover of “Baby It’s You.”)

Medusa also does not have much of a plot. Early on, a new girl, Clarissa (Bruna G.) arrives and worries she will do or say the wrong thing, but her storyline is dropped, so her character barely registers. The alpha girls in “The Treasures,” Mari (Mari Oliveira) and Michele (Lara Tremouroux), are curious to find Melissa (Bruna Linzmeyer), a woman who is rumored to have had her face set on fire for a transgression. And then there is the smarmy Pastor Ghilerme (Thiago Fragoso), who has very specific ideas about women’s roles in society and organizes dates for his young congregants. The young men are part of the Watchmen of Sion, which looks like a paramilitary outfit that practices dance-like moves. But there is too little detail provided about any of these characters.

The film unfolds slowly and only starts to generate some interest when Mari gets slashed during an attack and is facially scarred. She loses her job at a clinic and goes to work caring for comatose patients in a hospital ward. She meets Lucas (Felipe Frazão), a colleague, and they flirt as they posit theories on how the patients arrived in the ward. Mari starts finding herself attracted to Lucas and struggles with her purity. One night, after an encounter in the hospital, Mari wakes up naked in a forest. Da Silveria tips the film into surrealism in moments like this, or introduces a dream sequence, but the filmmaker never quite sustains this narrative thread either.

The mythological elements, about a beautiful maiden seduced, are in the film—a shot of Mari with her hair splayed out in every direction is, no doubt, meant to represent Medusa’s famous head of snakes. And Mari does see, photograph, and stare at an image of a snake on a wall in town early in the film as if to foreshadow that connection. But the overarching point about women being restricted in society feels muted, even if several of The Treasures are screaming in rage (not pain) by the film’s end. There is a moment Michele transgresses, which liberates her, but it does not feel particularly freeing. Nor is her passion, once expressed, surprising, even if da Silveria is indicating the damage repression does here. Alas, it is too little too late. For all the elements at play, too few of them work.

Medusa is certainly stylish, and the young performers sink into the film’s cool, modulated rhythms, but overall of the film lacks sufficient energy and emotion to make it worthwhile.