In Gabriel Martins’ film “Vicentina,” a mother’s grief leads her from door to door. Vicentina’s son was driving a bus that plunged from a viaduct, killing him and nearly all the passengers. Although there is no evidence that he caused the crash, police question his responsibility, while television coverage amplifies suspicion. Vicentina, who spends much of her time watching the news, increasingly blames herself and sets out to apologize to the victims’ families on her son’s behalf.
The visits bring sharply different reactions. Some people welcome her and share their feelings; others are hostile, distant or unwilling to meet. One man places responsibility for the tragedy on both Vicentina’s son and Vicentina herself. An elderly couple, meanwhile, asks her for money as compensation for their loss. Vicentina gives them what she can, in a moment that points to a form of solidarity extending beyond the immediate disaster.
The film’s focus gradually widens from personal mourning to the lives of the people Vicentina encounters. They are mostly Black and from modest, peripheral communities, and their connections emerge through gestures and shared circumstances rather than grief alone. The visits reveal fragments of a broader, unspoken history linking them.
Martins shifts from the happiness that shaped “Marte Um” to a story steeped in pain. Vicentina’s suffering is conveyed through the actor’s expression and her movement with a crutch, and the film’s muted, yellow-toned look reinforces its somber mood. Yet a carefully composed contrast between a white bottle and a vivid yellow object briefly interrupts the funereal atmosphere.
The film leaves open what might ease another person’s grief, while suggesting that mourning itself cannot simply be shared or transferred. Its distinctive achievement, the review argues, is the intensity with which it observes people and their inner lives, finding both hardship and community in the encounters.
Sources: Folha Ilustrada.