QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

A small child survives a plane crash, waking up in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon. American missionary Lawrence Byrne (Jeremy Xido) rescues and names her Rebecca. He claims her as his own daughter, and he heavily implies that Jesus Christ ensured her safety. As a teenager, Rebecca (Helena Zengel) takes the form of a healer, bringing solace to the ill and the elderly via her communication with God. This is set in modern day, and a nurse arrives to the mission, informing the teenager that they have met before. From that point, the adolescent grows more dubious of her parent, at a time when she has to perform her most challenging task yet.

Lawrence has promised locals that Rebecca will revive a patient from a coma. Byrne’s spiritual apotheosis sits at odds with the local Indigenous tribe, who are facing a threat greater than an Abrahamic God: illegal loggers.

Transamazonia is messily written. It expects a great deal from the audience, who may be unfamiliar with politics regarding the conservation of the Amazon rainforest, and despite white South African director Pia Marais’s efforts to diversify the cast, the finished result nevertheless smacks of white saviour syndrome. Rebecca (a strangely stiff Zengel) is porcelain pale, a ripple of blond hanging over her face. She longs to see the good in the indigenous tribe, chastising her father for his Biblical recitations to a group who have no interest in either the Old or New Testament. Lawrence establishes himself as the sneery, moustache twirling baddie who uses religion for self-interest: “You think we do this for applause?” he sneers at his teenage daughter.

The movie opens with a child being salvaged from the rubble of a plane crash, but Marais never expands on the aftermath; whatever traumas Rebecca endured in the following years are largely unexplored. Sabine Timoteo is foolishly wasted in the role of Denise, one of the few voices of reason in a world dominated by brio and bushy bearded men. Transamazonia narrowly passes the Bechdel Test, but that may be more accident than design, as there are only two notable female characters in the whole film: every other woman seems to fill the role of someone’s wife or mother. Rebecca finds herself alone at one point with a woman in a deep coma. That a sleeping character should fulfil a gender criteria is dubious, and the movie is sorely lacking in dynamic female roles.

Marais hardly challenges religion, and although the depiction of Christian missionaries isn’t effusive per sé, there is a lingering suspicion that the filmmakers do not wish to chastise the crusaders beyond a certain point. Christian missions use colonial tactics: they invade, they raid and they evangelise locals. They brainwash indigenous people into “salvation”. They feed the myth that South America ached for the teachings that stemmed from Palestine and Rome.

Characters of Transamazonia uses 21st-century technology: mobile phones, Facebook, etc. Considering Rebecca’s intelligence, it seems doubtful that she wouldn’t have done some research on the airplane crash that claimed many lives, but seemingly gifted her with a platform to speak to the heavens. It’s one of those minor felicities that challenges the integrity of both the characters and the narrative that spins around them.

Where the film succeeds is in its cinematography. Green bristles across the screen; large tracts of brown wood splatter in every direction. Transamazonia is a very colourful movie, and utilises dolly shots, rapid cuts and wide angles to bring the viewer headfirst into the world. What Marais has compiled is noteworthy from a technical standpoint, but the narrative, direction and acting belongs to a bucolic, bygone era.

Transamazonia just premiered in the Official Competitio. of the 77th Locarno Film Festival.