The unsaid and the silences ring deafeningly in this Brazilian drama set in an island community, where generations of women have endured sexual abuse and exploitation, but one maturing teenager becomes cognizant of her fate.
Review #2,995
Dir. Marianna Brennand
2024 | Brazil | Drama | 101min | 1.85:1 | Portuguese
PG13 (passed clean) for some mature content
Cast: Jamilli Correa, Fatima Macedo, Romulo Braga, Dira Paes, Emily Pantoja
Plot: 13-year-old Marcielle lives on Marajó Island in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. To break a terrible cycle that imprisons the women around her in an isolated region, she must do the impossible to liberate herself and her younger sister from a dark abyss of silence held by her own family
Awards: Won Giornate degli Autori Director’s Award (Venice)
International Sales: Bendita Film Sales
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Slightly Mature – Island Community; Sexual Abuse & Exploitation
Narrative Style: Straightforward
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Winning an award at Venice, this narrative feature debut by Marianna Brennand, who previously made two feature documentaries, is another in a steady line of eye-opening Brazilian films to have come out in the past years.
The most striking thing about Manas is how the unsaid and the silences amplify the void experienced by the female characters in their milieu, in this case, the fairly isolated Marajo Island, where the Amazon River pours into the Atlantic Ocean.
It is both a cinema of the implied and a cinema of implication, as 13-year-old Marcielle (Jamilli Correa in an excellent acting debut) finds out that growing up means being more cognizant of what she represents to the worst of men, whether outside on transiting barges where she encounters lewd guys who want her to sell more than just the food items she brings onboard, or at home where her ‘doting’ father regularly sleeps beside her.
In this riverside community, generations of women have endured the tyranny of men and have very much accepted, with unspoken pain and shame, the way things are, including Marcielle’s mother, who is quietly resolute.
“There is no use trying to change some things.”
Brennand’s work, which operates from Marcielle’s point of view, gives the character the dignity and burgeoning courage to come to terms with her circumstances.
It is a difficult subject—that of sexual exploitation and paedophilia—yet Manas does it in a way where such ghastly acts remain unseen and hence become hidden traces, never uttered or referred to directly, but implied with grave implications.
The more the film keeps it under the lid, the more its thematic concerns become clearer, which is an interesting, but more importantly, respectful way of telling the story.
Although slow-moving and bereft of a real plot, Manas is blessed with natural cinematography that brings us deep into the jungle or river. Where predators and prey perform their roles in the circle of life, the most dangerous animal is a father demanding his teenage daughter to follow him into the wilderness to hunt.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 