By FLÁVIO VALENTIM DE OLIVEIRA*

Commentary on the film directed by Marianna Brennand, currently showing in cinemas.

For Jamilli Correa

1.

The sound of the tide and the wind introduces the viewer to the film my, directed by Marianna Brennand, on the sensitive experience with the Marajó region. There, no one can have any doubts about how powerful and difficult nature is to subdue. A little later, in the course of the film, the viewer will also realize that the resistance of girls is another strength of that region. These are girls who learn through their sensitive experience that pleasure is an imposition of men.

I emphasize the word resistance here because of its political meaning in the context of the film. After all, women in this region experience the weight of social Darwinism and its universal rule of adaptation. What girl, after the trauma of sexual abuse, has not heard the expression: You have to be strong!

But, before this observation mentioned above, it is with some surprise that we see in the first scene that Danielle (Fátima Macedo) and Marcielle (Jamilli Corrêa) are mother and daughter. Surprise because they are both girls. This image reveals another force, namely: male violence, violence that imposes on these girls the undesirable condition of mother and, for this very reason, the feeling of perplexity that mothers and daughters seem like sisters, so young are these mothers, stands out.

This situation leads us to a subtle and dramatic scene: the mother and children enter the forest to pick açaí, a scene that, apparently, shows the intimate side of a simple, extractive family, but which, in reality, shows that in these parts, harvest time is not respected, namely, the maturation of the girls. They are the ones who are violently torn from the bunches of childhood.

Marcielle, a curious girl, looks at a photograph of her sister who never sent any news. It is no coincidence that the photo appears out of focus. In fact, this is a central narrative question of the film that can be translated into the question: Who will tell the story of these girls? Marcielle has already heard that they looked alike and that she left for Rio de Janeiro by taking the ferry.

Now, the raft that is being constituted in the film's plot as an enigmatic representation for those who are not accustomed to Amazonian realism and, however, is almost perceived as a diabolical myth for all those who know that the weight of child sexual exploitation is transported on it. As if the boatman Charon (the boatman who crosses the dead souls) were a familiar character in Marajó.

It is for this reason that we are led, for a moment, to feel sympathy for father Marcílio (Rômulo Braga) who makes us believe in the illusion that he is a protective father when he says that his daughter is not to get on the raft. A phrase that will only reveal the unhealthy feeling of patriarchal possession.

2.

The film follows Marcielle's sexual curiosity. She scrutinizes an old biology book about female reproductive organs. A canonical and outdated book that will not prevent her from her fate of abuse. Let's see that in another very important scene, Marcielle and her friend Cynthia dance at a party with sound systems, the backdrop being bright, colorful lights.

Dazzled like little insects, they are there more playing than eroticizing, although Cyntia is already being introduced to the game of seduction with her little lipstick. Abusers are there on the lookout and with the sound of a song in the background in which the singer shouts: “I am from Pará”, one can notice in this environment a feeling much more of shame than of local pride. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Marcielle feels dizzy and nauseous. Coming out of the bathroom, she sees for the first time a prostitute being mistreated and framing a man with her razor. She looks with astonishment and admiration at this woman who looks nothing like her submissive mother.

Everything is a labyrinth of sexual traps. In Dona Jacy's business, everything is sold and exchanged. She is the one who sends messages from the raftsmen to the girl Cyntia. Meanwhile, Marcielle only dances in church to the song “Conquering the Impossible”, marked by the chorus “Champion, winner. This faith that makes you impossible”. But after the rape, the character becomes silent, misses all the steps on the day of the presentation and realizes that not even the baby Jesus will protect her, discovering that this world is not for girls. So, when Marcielle goes to have her identity photo taken (she who wanted to speed up the river of maturity) she already knows that this is something she will not have.

Worthy of note is the beautiful work of Fátima Macedo (Danielle, Marcielle's mother). This character masterfully conducts the rhythm of silence and every viewer will feel with her the hard experience of self-controlling anger in situations of such injustice.

With her character, we realize that submission is not something that fits into sociological descriptions and, perhaps, only the art of acting can teach us how difficult it is to escape these traps of servitude. She bathes her daughter, looks at Marcielle when she asks for help: she only wants her hammock back to escape her father's advances; she holds back her tears, saying with her eyes that she loves her, but there is nothing she can do.

The loving father who is initiating his daughter into the rituals of courage through hunting, transforms into a sexual predator. His excited breathing behind Marcielle and the sound of the gunshot leave no doubt. The bath in the river will only show throughout the film that these waters do not purify, do not remove the stains of shame. This violent man is the same one who promises protection.

It is distressing to see a girl who trusts her father having her sexuality slowly violated. The film is all about intimacy and, in this aspect, Marciel is exactly the character who shows the violent intimacy that our hypocrisy does not want to see. Now, what can we say about a girl who just wants support (a handhold, as the local slang says) to get rid of harassment?

In this way, the character of the abusive father is the object of repulsion for the public. He is typically the exploited Amazonian man, and those who are exploited also want to exploit in capitalism. Marx says that the commodity is mysterious because it conceals the “social characteristics of human labor itself.” The commodity takes on a life of its own, as if it were independent, and so when commodities are produced, fetishes are produced. Marcielle is both a “commodity” and a “fetish.”[I]

Marciel disposes of his wife like used merchandise and because he sees his daughter as just another commodity, he doesn't allow other men to take advantage of her; he also knows that a ferryman catches girls like fish and his job is just to show the customer where to go. His possession is his daughter and he demands sexual pleasure with all the authority of a father in front of the police chief Aretha (Dira Paes).

It makes it clear that she, as a representative of the State, cannot invade their privacy – the privacy that guarantees the girls’ survival. His wife Danielle makes it clear, for example, that it was Marciel who gave her a roof over her head and food. When police officer Aretha confronts him for sexual abuse, the viewer may even feel a new sense of hope. But after Marciel goes to get his daughter back, in a house where only women live, we know that social rights are worth very little in this region.

3.

When the father's body is buried in the mangrove swamp by his daughters, the viewer is taken back to the primitive Adamic image of the patriarch's return to clay. This clay is also the foundation of many of our missionary and civilizing beliefs about the Amazon region. It is hard not to notice that Marciel goes to church to receive the blessing of a decent man and this will not be a problem, as long as he takes his family with him, no one will dispute this title. After all, churches filled with families is also a contract.

But the movie my It is not exactly a moral judgment. It is not enough to simply hate Marciel to understand the film. It is worth remembering that in the 1970s the famous Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini was accused, including by his colleagues in cinema and literature, of harboring a retrograde nostalgia for the “Italian” (a pejorative term that designated a deeply provincial Italy of the past).

Pier Paolo Pasolini responded to these criticisms by saying that he was the enemy of “Italian” because everything about it is “petty-bourgeois, fascist, Christian-democratic; it is provincial and on the fringes of history.”[ii] However, Pasolini distinguishes this provincial mentality from the “pre-national and pre-industrial peasant world.” From this world Pasolini drew much of his critical language against the superfluous life of the Italian national bourgeoisie.

Why do I do this interpolation with the film? my? Because perhaps a provincial audience from Belém will applaud the film and point the finger at the character Marciel. Precisely this character who is potentially the most primitive mirror of masculinity and local power. Just like Pasolini, the director of my dived into the waters of the riverine world (a world that is not at all mythical and that unfolds in underworlds).

In fact, when a certain national dictator said that the Amazon rainforest does not burn because it is humid, this could not help but be heard as a perverse allegory about women, especially girls from Marajó. They are expected, due to sexual exploitation, to always be humid.

*Flávio Valentim de Oliveira He is a professor of philosophy. Author, among other books, of Art, Theology and Death. Philosophy and literature in Franz Kafka and Walter Benjamin (Appris). [https://amzn.to/3xAH44f]

Reference

my

Brazil, 2025, 101 minutes.

Directed by: Marianna Brennand.

Screenplay: Felipe Sholl, Marcelo Grabowsky, Marianna Brennand, Antonia Pellegrino, Camila Agustini and Carolina Benevides.

Cast: Jamilli Corrêa, Romulo Braga, Fatima Macedo, Dira Paes

Notes

[I] Karl Marx. Capital. Critique of Political Economy. Book I. (2014). Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian Civilization, p.94.

[ii] Pier Paolo Pasolini. Corsair Writings (2020). New York: Routledge.

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