Temporada | World Cinema

Early on in Temporada , the protagonist Juliana ( Grace Passo) joins a local sanitation department as a door to door worker relocating from her roots. The film traces her efforts to fit into a new big city, away from her husband. Our protagonist comes across a closed group of hustlers in the new job trying to make a living for themselves amidst the gloomy payrolls and a sense of inevitable boredom. Director Andre Novais relies on his actors to render life to the well etched out parts by employing  a sense of dead pan earnestness and minimalistic filmmaking devices. The film is populated with long drawn static shots and empty background compositions echoing the sense of solitude and hopelessness of the main characters inhabiting the ever-busy metropolitan cramming them for space from outside.

Julian’s colleagues are not mere footnotes in the plot but real people with real problems like a middle aged loner who has recently discovered the possibility that he might be a father of 3 year old son pending a DNA test result , a low key romance between the oldest employee of the team and a younger team mate and the team leader having a shady past involving a divorce owing to her looks. The mood of the film is sublime and renders a sense of calmness to the narrative. Our protagonist, Julian is also having issues with her husband after an accident that occurred in the past that cost them a unborn child. In Temporada , characters as in real life converse in overlapping dialogues and opens about their individual problems when they spot a shoulder to console themselves in between their largely boring jobs.

The film focuses on Julia’s efforts to regain the control of her life that has long been going bizarre with a sense of low self-worth. The screenplay not for once misses out on her emotional beats and we travel with her during the entire runtime aided by a largely absent or minimal score and empathetic camera work. Temporada is a powerful piece of cinema that empowers , inspires and offers a perspective to find peace within ourselves to embark on the “ Long Way Home”.