New Directors/New Films 2016; Film Comments Selects

[Chris Knipp]

ANITA ROCHA DA SILVEIRA: KILL ME PLEASE/MATA-ME POR FAVOR (2015)


VALENTINA HERSZAGE IN KILL ME PLEASE

Vile, beautiful girls make out and dream of death in a posh soulless suburb of Rio

Anita Rocha da Silveira’s bright-colored debut feature wallows adoringly among pretty young Brazilian girls, and a few pretty young Brazilian boys. it is not a "slasher flick," and there is no "teenage angst." There is a lot of kissing, and some dancing, and a background of murders of young women in the wasteland surrounding large new suburban housing estates in Rio de Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca. The girls, who belong to a competitive clan, are morbidly fascinated with the idea of being murdered, presumably after being raped, by a man. Particularly the pale, pretty, faintly ghoulish Bia (Valentina Herszage).

Bia wants to have sex with her boyfriend, the cute, sweet Pedro, but he follows a Christian agenda. One of the films' more successful outrages are scenes of a heavily made up young female "priest" who delivers trendy sermons and hip Christian songs to a small young audience including Bia and Pedro.

Filmmaker Anita Rocha da Silveira delivers on the exhibitionistic formal eye candy in every scene, with quite a succession of pretty young people. What she cannot seem to deliver on is story. Possible nods to to Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, and the atmospheres of David Lynch cannot make up for the fact that there is no narrative structure to speak of. Kill Me Please is more like a music video than a feature film. In his Hollywood Reporter review, Jonathan Holland says the film "packages its horrors too neatly into beautiful images."

Kill Me Please/Mata me por favor 101 mins., in Portuguese, debuted in the Orizzonti section at Venice Sept. 2015, and went on to win prizes at Rio, with three other festivals including Gothenburg and New Directors/New Films in New York. Watched at the latter for this review Mar. 2016.