Dir: Gabriel Mascaro | Cast: Denise Weinberg, Rodrigo Santoro, Miriam Socarrás, Adanilo, Rosa Malagueta, Clarissa Pinheiro | Portugal, Sci-fi drama 82′ 2025
Stories about courageous women refusing to budge are always welcome this fourth feature for Gabriel Mascaro puts a light-hearted spin on the theme with surreal but lowkey sci-fi.
The Blue Trail (O Último Azul), is a feisty fable about a woman who’s not for turning. Rather like the determined spirit played by Sonia Braga in Kleber Mondonca Filho’s Aquarius, Mascaro’s 77 year-old character Tereza refuses to move on, despite her years.
The Blue Trail’s focus is on age discrimination in a near future Brazil where the young still hold sway in their parents’ future. With mobile ‘phones and social media they are backed by a government that insists the more mature should move off to remote housing estates in a series of ‘wrinkle wagons’, all in the name of economic productivity. So these citizens are forcibly relocated to remote colonies to make way for the younger generation.
Tereza, 77, has reached the mandated age, but refuses to comply. Choosing freedom over submission, Tereza (Weinberg) sets off on a liberating, life-changing odyssey into the Amazon Forest where she sets her heart on learning to fly, with the help of a riverboat captain (Santoro) who transports her along the world’s most enigmatic river where they will encounter a fantastical fortune-telling blue snail, changing their lives forever.
Dreamlike yet grounded in a sense of timely reality, Mascaro’s satire is funny, moving and beautiful to behold with its gorgeous colours, imaginative camerawork and a melodious score. Although the premise sounds preposterous this is an engaging tale of protest and rediscovery showing that a new lease of life is possible – at any age – if you follow your instincts and refuse to give in to domination. @MeredithTaylor