Words such as “charming” and “cosy” often attach themselves to films found under the demographic umbrella known as “grey pound” movies. If it weren’t for the advanced age of the plucky heroine, Gabriel Mascaro’s exuberant The Blue Trail (O Último Azul) couldn’t be less like the grey standards The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel or Hampstead.
This trippy lo-fi sci-fi, a sensation in its native Brazil, imagines a near-future in which ageing is quietly criminalised. Citizens who reach 77 are ceremoniously honoured with golden laurels, only to be stripped of their autonomy and sent to far-flung colonies from where no one returns.
Tereza (Denise Weinberg), a sharp, unsentimental woman who greets the state’s “honour” with scepticism, is having none of it. Faced with exile, she resolves to fulfil a long-delayed dream before her freedom is revoked, setting off on a wild journey through the Amazon.
Blending dystopian sci-fi with real-world concerns about elder care, Mascaro’s film stealthily world-builds, introducing government permits for travel, and “wrinkle wagons” rounding up the elderly, in a timeline that looks suspiciously like our own.
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Once Tereza embarks on her river-bound odyssey, the film finds its rhythm, tapping out the same two-step that once animated The African Queen.
The heroine’s journey is as much about rediscovery as it is about escape. Along the way she encounters a drifting cast of characters: a dodgy boat captain, a wandering Bible saleswoman and others living on the margins of this stifled society.
These encounters, tinged with surreal touches such as the hallucinogenic “blue drool snail”, allow Tereza to reconnect with curiosity, pleasure and possibility. And to hell with the oppressive state.
Weinberg’s defiant performance anchors the wild ride. Mascaro, inspired in part by his grandmother’s late-life artistic awakening, treats ageing not as decline but as transformation.
Visually, this Berlin Silver Bear winner is often striking as it leans into watery expanses and rainforest. Its cinematographer, Guillermo Garza, creates a minor masterpiece with a luminous floating-casino sequence.
The script, written by the director and Tibério Azul, occasionally fumbles its dystopian framework. But the journey has enough vigour, underpinned by ideas on autonomy and ageing, to sustain its adventure.
In cinemas from Friday, April 17th
