Cast: Sonia Braga, Udo
Kier, and Barbara Colen
Directors: Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonca
Filho
131 minutes (18) 2019
MUBI Blu-ray region B
Rating: 7/10
Review by Donald Morefield
Approaching a quiet village in near-future Brazil, a
tanker lorry drives over empty coffins accidentally strewn along the road. The
vehicle brings essential water to Bacurau, where a failure of the piped supply has
alarmed the villagers. Returning home, Teresa (Barbara Colen) arrives in Bacurau
for the funeral of respected Carmelita. A celebratory procession for the
deceased matriarch ends with startling burial in a watery grave. Next day,
mayor Tony Jr appears to campaign for re-election but, at first, nobody turns
out to see or hear him as complaints fester in response to his sleazy corruption.
Dr Domingas (Sonia Braga) confronts him about the kidnapping of a young woman.
Later, a UFO style drone tracks local delivery biker. Horses
escape from the nearby farm and introduce further mystery to rapidly expanding scenarios
about predatory capitalism. With improv singing, the local guitarist insults
spying visitors. Michael (Udo Kier) heads a group of assorted outsiders
plotting a secret man-hunting mission against villagers. They are sporty, but
so unsporting in their approach to criminal assaults, it’s a crowd-pleasing
twist when the inhabitants of Bacurau rise up to defend their territory.
Jury Prize-winner at last year’s Cannes festival Bacurau (Portuguese for ‘nighthawk’), a
prime example of foreign-language sci-fi, is rarely good at portrayals of quirky
futurism, but due to socio-political differences and cultural perspectives, this
sometimes generates a compellingly weird sense of otherness via surrealistic
tendencies and several very odd, or offbeat, directorial choices and winningly quasi-satirical
narrative.
Here, world cinema embraces weird western themes explored in a mix
of Portuguese and English dialogue by sundry characters often intended to be
upended stereotypes. ‘Trigger King’ Pacote is the village’s favourite
video-star outlaw. For the movie’s action-packed climax, local bandit Lunga (Silvero
Pereira) returns to help the village with defence against gringo mercenaries.
After a child is murdered, violence ramps up, into a
siege with machine guns and satellite surveillance. The eclectic score includes
synth music ‘Night’ by John Carpenter. This curio blends generic elements of
commercial Hollywood pictures with wittily subversive political critiques of
Brazilian history. Despite its desert setting, any fans of swampy movies like Walter
Hill’s Southern Comfort (1981), and John
Woo’s Hard Target (1993), should
enjoy this unique central inversion displaying cowboys ‘n’ indians parodies as dystopian motifs.
