August Winds

Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro made an auspicious narrative film debut with this 20214 feature. Meditations on life and death aren’t exactly few and far between, but you won’t recognize Mascaro’s truly original approach. With a subdued plot, August Winds is a film of quietly unfolding sensual pleasure, punctuated with warm humour, before it subtly reaches its profoundly beautiful final image.

Shirley (Dandara de Morais), a gorgeous young woman, is in the countryside taking care of her aging grandmother when her diver boyfriend discovers a skull in the ocean. Then a corpse washes ashore… Youthful vitality and decay contrast throughout the film, evoking a sense of the confluence of time. Shot by the director himself, the stunning cinematography lends an optimistic beauty to the seemingly dark subject matter. At its heart, however, it’s the touching performance from de Morais that anchors this poetic and observant tale.

Mascaro’s second non-documentary feature, Neon Bull, is also screening this week, in advance of his latest, The Blue Trail, screening at VIFF.

In this place where time should move slowly and languorously, the wind and sea erode elements of deceptive permanence, and the transitory nature of life catches only the young by surprise.

-Jay Weissberg, Variety