A little girl accompanied by a psychologist, a man who bears clear signs of severe burns, an old, blind woman, and a boy angrily playing with a ball. These are the protagonists of Justa, the new fiction feature directed by acclaimed Portuguese filmmaker Teresa Villaverde (in competition at Venice in 1994 with Two Brothers, My Sister, in competition at Berlin with Colo [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Teresa Villaverde
fiche film]), a film selected at the 27th Festival do Rio thanks to the Europe! Voices of Women+ in Film initiative run by European Film Promotion. And then there is another “character”: a cemetery, since all of these people are bound by the loss of their loved ones in a tragic accident, which Villaverde’s screenplay gradually unravels, leading the viewer to slowly piece together the jigsaw puzzle of events.

The wilds of nature are present from the very first scenes of the movie, which show uprooted trees, heaps of soil and dead branches, slightly sinister frames accompanied by the sound of a Brahms aria. Justa (the young and talented Madalena Cunha) is a ten-year-old girl who has trouble sleeping at night. Her father Mariano (Ricardo Vidal) is severely burned from head to toe, and Justa takes care of him. Soon after, we see Mariano going to the graveyard with Elsa (Betty Faria), an elderly, blind woman, both holding a bouquet of fresh flowers to lay on the graves of their loved ones. For him, it’s his wife and Justa’s mother; for her, her husband, whose death Elsa feels responsible for. Also present in the cemetery is a boy, Simão (Alexandre Batista), who kicks a ball against the boundary wall and whom we later see wandering among the tombstones, both by day and by night.

Through the calm conversations between the characters – almost always in pairs and filmed in close-ups on their faces, especially the dialogues between Mariano and Elsa, between Justa and her psychologist (Filomena Cautela), herself grieving, and between Elsa and Simão – the elements that bind these people emerge, along with the tragic circumstances that saw their loved ones perish while they survived. The movie is inspired by the massive raging wildfires that devastated Portugal in 2017, killing many people trapped in nearby villages and in cars stuck on the roads, as the asphalt melted and the high temperatures consumed everything. “If they had taken care of the trees and forests, no one would have died,” says one character, while another predicts that one day, “everything will burn again”.

Justa tells the story of the aftermath, how one can live with pain and with memories of events forever imprinted on one’s body (ie, burns or blindness). It also speaks of a nature that does not forgive (“Water, fire, why won’t you leave us alone?”) and that deserves greater respect. It’s a meditative, profound work that evokes a tragedy by showing little and saying much, with delicacy and restraint.

Justa was produced by Alce Filmes (Portugal) and co-produced by Epicentre Films (France). Its international sales are handled by Portugal Film.