Sol Alegria (2018) User Reviews

A weird road trip.. morally reprehensible piece of cinema

[samxxxul · 7/10 · 15 August 2020]

A tropicalist subversive road that includes guerrilla nuns who grow marijuana, throwing guns at patrol cars and worships free love in a dystopian society. The film is a tribute to the Cinema nova movement with references to the pornochanchada, a genre of Brazilian cinema which coexisted during the last military dictatorship. Every performance in the film is amazingly stark and surreal with best performance by Noé Hernández (We are the Flesh) and a cameo appearance by Brazilian singer Ney Matogrosso. The directors Tavinho and Mariah Teixeira (father and daughter in fiction and outside) in many areas present in a bizarre way possible and the film kicks down just about every filmmaking rules Partly thanks to the beautiful landscapes which supports the visions of the project. The film's ideological message is epitomized by the eccentric characters consisting of a lawless family - a kind of "Bonnie & Clyde" with children. They take refuge at the headquarters of the Sol Alegria phalanx controlled by a military junta and inhabited by corrupt priests foretelling the apocalypse. The characters play with symbols and shifts enough to stimulate the mind and captivates with its radical change of scenery. The film also pays tribute to Nagisa Oshima's Realm of the Senses (1976) and the series Lost in Space. The twisted nuns feel a lot like a tribute to Almodóvar Dark Habits (1983). Plus, Link Wray's The Swag, which was part of John Water 's Pink Flamingos (1972), also features in the movie. In the end, Sol Alegria is not easy to digest because of its explicit scenes but has potential to become cult classic in future and Tavinho Teixeira-Mariah Teixeira to me made another bizarre solid film. To quote from the film anuses are their biggest weapon: "more powerful than 70,000 rifles, 100,000 cannons and any chemical weapon you will ever see".

Funny, Hallucinating, Subversive.

[roger-99-171599 · 7/10 · 28 November 2019]

Blending Avant-Garde, absurdist humor, political commentary and surrealism, director Tavinho Teixeira's hallucinating road movie introduces a very dysfunctional family as representations of an anarchist society battling the system, the counterculture. In a current disturbingly apocalyptic era, they steal from corrupt pastors, and join a rebel gang of armed nuns in a secured remote area, where they plan strategies for a war, while experiencing drugs, orgies, fetishes, cleansing and connections to the unknown. Filled with sharp dialogue addressing political, social and sexual taboos, it's a madly inventive, explicit, subversive and extravagant comedy about an out-of-control land of power, sex liberation, corruption and fanaticism.