MEDUSA
★★
OUT 14 JULY / CERT 15 / 132 MINS
DIRECTOR Anita Rocha da Silveira
CAST Mari Oliveira, Lara Tremouroux, Felipe Frazão
An intriguing but frustrating one here, as writer-director Anita Rocha da Silveira serves up an unsettling piece that has a lot to say but doesn’t quite know what to do with it all. In Brazil, female members of a fundamentalist Christian community step into the night, donning featureless white masks and beating all hell out of supposed sinful women. These extremist terrorists have had their humanity totally repressed — or so it seems. Da Silveira’s heavily giallo-inspired trip takes aim at oppressive patriarchal societies, group-think, hysterical conservatism and vapid religious media, with Medusa eventually unravelling these evangelistic hypocrites. But while there are arresting moments, as a story Medusa feels all too slight.