The woman has become a media martyr in the interim, and the shallow, cruel Michele thinks that if Mari can snap a photo of the woman - who, quite conveniently, is a patient at Mari’s new job - then everyone will see that she’s ugly and will lose interest. (This is a place of beauty, her boss tells her, and she’s ruining their image.) So she ventures out into the world and gets a job at a private hospital for coma patients, where a romance with a “heathen” coworker makes her question everything she’s been taught.Īll this runs parallel to a strange, rather underbaked subplot about an actress who was the first victim of one of these Christian purity squads, who set her on fire as punishment for attracting too much male attention. Early on, Mari receives a nasty cut across her cheek during one of their nightly raids, and loses her job at a Christian plastic surgeon’s office as a result. But it quickly loses interest in that storyline and shifts over to Mari (Mariana Oliviera), Michele’s best friend, and her slow drift out of the faith. Appearance is of the utmost importance to Michele, who preaches that only the cleanest and prettiest among them will receive the ultimate honor of becoming a Christian housewife.Īt the start, it seems as if “Medusa” will concentrate on the initiation of a new girl into the gang. #MADAME MEDUSA HOW TO#Their leader Michele (Lara Tremoroux), a picture-perfect blonde - racism and colorism play a part here, too - hosts a YouTube series with topics like “How to take a perfect Christian selfie” and, more ominously, a tutorial on how to cover bruises with makeup. Sometimes they film their victims and post the videos online, giggling at the rising pageviews. Although the church seems to know about and tacitly endorse it, the girls act alone when they don blank white masks and take to the streets at night. That’s where the viciousness of teenage bullying comes in. The idea of purity is used as a weapon in the film, both toward the girls - at a Christian speed-dating event, one of the boys says that a “good woman” shouldn’t be there at all - and between them. “Medusa” examines more current, even scarier strains of apocalyptic Christianity and evangelical purity culture, with characters who have been taught from a young age to believe that the secular world is evil, Jesus is coming at any moment, and he wants them to be untouched and perfectly submissive when he arrives. “The Handmaid’s Tale” famously explores similar themes of women throwing each other under the bus in the name of the patriarchy. Either way, it’s a bargain made between these girls, their camera-ready pastor, and the hulking young men with buzz cuts who act as his de facto army: They agree to protect a system that renders them little more than playthings and punching bags in exchange for smug self-satisfaction and the ability to take their anger out on people even lower in the hierarchy than them. Da Silviera seems willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. That’s the sympathetic way of looking at it - although the possibility remains that while some of them conform out of fear, others simply enjoy the power. That renders scenes of roving gangs of teenage girls roughing up women they find walking alone at night, kicking them to the ground and calling them “whores,” chillingly prescient.ĭa Silviera’s primary interest is in the mindset of these young women, who oppress those who are weaker than them as a release valve for their own built-up frustration. Wade has raised the theocratic threat level even further. But in the interim, the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. If you were paying attention, then scenes where a clean-cut, handsome young pastor preaches about how “secular government was a mistake” were already ominous when “Medusa” premiered at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight last summer. 'Purple Hearts' Review: Netflix Gives Sofia Carson Her Own 'A Star Is Born' #MADAME MEDUSA PLUS#New Movies: Release Calendar for July 29, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films Not so long ago, “Medusa” could be described as having light elements of science fiction, with oblique references to an unnamed demarcation line between the time before, when “deviants” roamed the streets unafraid, and a more righteous present. “ Medusa” is da Silviera’s second feature, and continues the exploration of violence and adolescence in her debut, 2015’s “Kill Me Please.” But “Medusa” takes on a frightening new relevance thanks to its framing: Here. This belonging comes at a price, of course, for women who choose to align themselves with misogynist power structures - the thesis of Brazilian filmmaker Anita Rocha da Silviera’s latest film. Specifically, cruelty towards those who fall outside of the party’s sphere of protection is the point of fascism, bringing a sense of safety and superiority to those who are deemed worthy of inclusion. To borrow a catchphrase from political discourse: The cruelty is the point.
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