Medusa has some elements in common with a project we are working on, which also has its roots in Latin America. It may be a massive generalisation, but it feels as though the issues surrounding feminism, which include class and race, not to mention violence and femicide, are lived on a sharper edge in that continent. Medusa spins the trope on its head, opening with a scene where a band of women hunt down their female prey, accusing her of being a slut and beating her up. The vigilante band, to which the film’s protagonists belong, are religious evangelists, who sing sexy songs in the name of Jesus for their church choir. The church is lead by the handsome and charismatic pastor who also has a band of vigilante boys as part of his congregation. As the film unfolds, the protagonists undergo a perhaps predictable transformation, turning against the church and indulging in sexual relationships out of marriage, as well as becoming victims of male abuse. The film has various narrative threads which seem to function more as platforms for its discourse than roads to go down. A missing mythical burns victim, a lesbian romance, orgies in the woods. Nevertheless there is a verve to Da Silveira’s direction which keeps driving the movie forwards. The preacher who embodies the Bolsonaro subtext is righteously skewered, and the narrative around evangelism, so strong in Brazil, helps to illustrate the way in which oppression of women is perpetrated in many different guises.
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