By Josh Gardner*
Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz’s feature film debut, Charcoal / Carvão, premiered last week at TIFF before heading to the San Sebastián Film Festival in Spain. A dark satire, the film follows Irene (Maeve Jenkings, Aquarius, Neon Bull), her philandering husband, Jairo (Rômulo Braga), and their naive son, Jean (Jean Costa), as they house a dangerous Argentine gangster, Miguel (Cesar Bordo, Wild Tales), on the run. Tensions soon come to a boil as the family struggles to keep Miguel's presence a secret. Relying upon thrills and laughs, the film ultimately highlights the absurdity of the modern world.
We spoke to Carolina about the incredible cast, feeling like a foreigner in your own house, and the importance of artists speaking truth to power.
After making numerous successful shorts, how did you decide this was the story with which you would jump into feature length filmmaking?
I was lucky enough to do six short films and screened them in important festivals. Three of them were at TIFF, where I am doing the premiere of Charcoal. This new film has all of the elements I was interested in exploring, offering a social critique alongside some sarcasm and acidity. I grew up in the countryside, so the social roles that are portrayed in the film were always something that I wanted to show and reflect upon. I also have this obsession with absurdity and I think that this moment in Brazil, and the world, is especially absurd. I melded this obsession with all the things that I experienced when I was a child and teenager living in a conservative place, and this led to Charcoal.
One of the things I loved most about the film was its tone. It transitions from dark comedy to thriller, to relationship drama. How did you achieve this?
It is, indeed, a mix of feelings and tones. That’s what I think life is and that's how I enjoy making my films. You are not always happy or sad. And, even a very bizarre or sad moment could also be funny. It's the way I am and, perhaps, the only way that I know how to portray the world. In the film, we have thriller-ish moments and family drama moments and moments of acidity combined with humor. I think that's precisely the way I would see a story like that play out. So, that's how I tried to portray it.
Talk about the cast. They were all terrific and Maeve Jenkings gives a really wonderful performance. Audiences are probably familiar with her work in some of the biggest Brazilian films of the last few years. Did you always have her in mind for the role?
I always had Maeve in mind for the film. She and Cesar [Bordo] were the first ones to be invited on the project. In fact, I invited her four or five years ago to do the film. She accepted; lucky me. She was very involved in the film. I think Maeve has this thing about being sweet and sour—she portrays this very well. She also has a lot of layers, a lot of tones, which is very similar to the film. So we have a very good partnership and work very well together. She's also the main actress in my other feature film, Toll, which is going to be released next year.
The film is a co-production between Brazil and Argentina. How did you decide to bring in that angle, the fish out of water element, of an Argentine on the run in rural Brazil?
It was important that Cesar’s character be a person that was not only hidden, but also a foreigner, a person that didn't feel at home at all. In Brazil we speak Portuguese, different from the other countries in South America that speak Spanish, which makes us a bit of a ‘fish out of water.’ So it would be important for me that the language would be different, but not so different that they couldn’t understand each other when they wanted or needed to.
I also believe that the fact that he was not from there served as a metaphor of sorts to the family that are clearly playing roles—they are really foreigners in their own social roles. The husband didn't want to be married to Irene, but needed to be. Irene didn't want to be playing the role of the wife who does everything in the house, who takes care of the kid, and who's married to a deadbeat guy. They are all foreigners in the film somehow, but at the same time, foreigners that are familiar. And it was only with an Argentine guy that, at some point, they could communicate.
Talk about the character of the Jean, the son in the film? He’s caught between his parents and his new roommate, the gangster. What does this character mean for you, playing both sides?
Jean is raised in this conservative environment, so he reflects this environment. At the same time, he is fresh, he's a kid, he has some pureness that will remain or not depending on what he learns or lives. Then we see this pure friendship between him and the drug dealer that, in the end, it's not exactly pure. So Jean will stick to his family because you are supposed to stick with your family. The cycle of violence and of conservatism will repeat if it's not broken. Jean represents this—that things could be different, but in the end they won't be.
What more can you tell us your new film? Can you give us a teaser?
Toll is also a dark comedy, but with even more humor than Charcoal. I always want to talk about the absurdity and the bizarre and how we deal with it. So it's about a mother who wants to send her son to a gay conversion therapy program and starts doing some illegal things to raise money to send him. For her, it's more important to have a straight son than to be a person who walks the straight and narrow. Somehow both films are similar in that they deal with values and the inversion of values, but the tone is different. Toll is more bizarrely funny, let's say.
Finally, could you talk about your current perceptions of the Brazilian film industry?
The current government hasn’t been very supportive of the film industry. We artists are very critical of this government and what’s happening in the country right now, and these critiques are very present in our films and the arts generally. It has been very difficult for us to make films. I think the films are still getting a lot of attention because of their artistic qualities. I'm very proud to be part of a generation of Brazilian filmmakers and artists who are fighting against the government, each one with their own voice.
Josh Gardner is the founder of Cinema Lamont, a non-profit that fosters cross-cultural understanding through the power of world cinema. He runs Cine Mexico Now, a festival of contemporary Mexican cinema in Detroit and is a programmer at the AFI Latin American Film Festival in Washington DC.
