✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Cinema

Bacurau review ★★★★★

20 Mar 20 – 20 Mar 21, STREAMING ON MUBI NOW

Brazilian filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles love to confuse and raise adrenaline with their bizarre genre-clasher Bacurau

By Euan Franklin on 12/3/2020

Bárbara Colen in Bacurau
Bárbara Colen in Bacurau
Bacurau review 3 Bacurau review Euan Franklin
In this tortured world of ours, isolation grows more appealing day by day. Imagine living in the middle of nowhere, away, far, far away, not dealing with issues outside of our control? Despite being a denial fantasy, it’s an awfully tempting one.


This isolated-village mentality crawls through Bacurau, the bizarre genre-clasher from Brazilian filmmakers Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. The secluded town that titles the film is one of these nowhere places, filled with the heat and dust of a Sergio Leone Western, cut off from a suggestively dystopian world. And then there's the weird, psychotropic rituals that have a disturbing, Midsommar-like touch – starting with the funeral of a 94-year-old elder, whose coffin inexplicably fills with water.


Much of the peculiar pleasure of Bacurau is in its town and its folk: there’s a school, a chapel, a brothel, and even a history museum. We don’t have the pleasure of seeing inside many of them, lending an uncomfortable mystery to these buildings.


Teresa (Bárbara Colen) rides into town on a water truck on a dirt road, initially blocked by a spillage of coffins from an upturned vehicle. A bloody corpse lays disfigured nearby. We don’t know where she’s coming from, or where exactly she is. But, in retrospect, this feels like a narrative deception: she’s not the hero of the film. Nobody is.


The film proceeds with an enchanting, surreal domesticity – to the point where you give up guessing where the story goes and just enjoy the strange surprises. Yet there’s a patient evil pending, some harmful force creeping in from the outside world, first indicated by a flying saucer spinning near the town. Where are we? When are we? Even within the unpredictable context of Bacurau, this is a flummoxing turn of events.


Filho and Dornelles clearly love stretching their ambiguities and, for a while, the film shapes into a communal arthouse experience. But then, following their streak of surprises, they delve into genre territory. They ease into the classic plot of humble villagers seeking aid against a coming threat, essentially snatching from Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.


The enemies circling around Bacurau are, for the most part, trigger-happy Americans who just love to kill people – shooting and talking like politically motivated cartoons. Although it’s always entertaining and liberating to watch an arrogant superpower mocked in this way, it’s a wafer-thin satire. The final confrontation tenses with the innate silence of the town, louder than brutal gunfire, more sinister than streaks of blood. But it’s an unfulfilling conclusion: Filho and Dornelles never go full Kurosawa on the town.


All these elements work together nicely enough, with a clear excitement to confuse as much as raise adrenaline. But the film, as a whole, feels like a muddled dream. There’s a fun, improvised quality to the writing, but Bacurau doesn’t know where it wants to be.



Bacurau is available to stream on MUBI now.


What Bacurau review
When 20 Mar 20 – 20 Mar 21, STREAMING ON MUBI NOW
Price £n/a
Website Click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 24–26 March. Photo: The Parakeet, Kentish Town
Things to do in London this weekend: 24–26 March
Irene Maiorino and Alba Rohrwacher in My Brilliant Friend season 4, HBO/Sky Atlantic (Photo: HBO)
My Brilliant Friend, season 4, Sky Atlantic: first-look photo, release date, plot, cast
Best art exhibitions in London. Photo: Thin Air at the Beams
Top exhibitions on now in London

Editor's Picks

Daniel Craig in No Time to Die
No Time to Die review
Alexander Skarsgård in Infinity Pool (Photo: Universal)
In cinemas this weekend: Alexander Skarsgård vs Keanu Reeves
Yifei Liu in Mulan
Best movies to watch this month, March 2020
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).

Bacurau

Brazil

Cinema

World Cinema

2020

MUBI

You might like

  • Bachi Valishvili, Levan Gelbakhiani and Ana Javakishvili in And Then We Danced

    And Then We Danced review ★★★★★

  • Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, Djebril Zonga in Les Miserables

    Les Misérables (2020) review ★★★★★

  • Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire

    Portrait of a Lady on Fire review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×