Like most recent events, the 2021 edition of the Sundance Film Festival has shifted from a personal showcase to a virtual one. Despite the change, we’ll still be giving you reviews on some of the most interesting experiences we’ll come across, from indie movies to VR experiments.
The pink cloud begins with a message that underscores the disturbing ridiculousness of where we are: it is a film about people trapped in unending quarantine because of a deadly threat outside their doors. It is also early foresight, as it was written in 2017 and filmed in 2019. It has no deliberate links to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is impossible not to draw parallels between The pink cloud and our current reality.
The film is set in a Brazilian city where a mysterious pink gaseous cloud hovers over the residents and kills people if they are outside for more than 10 seconds, trapping them in the building where they have been sheltered for years. That being said, The pink cloud is less about the deadliness of their situation and more about the devastating monotony that follows. Quarantine is seen through a relationship between Giovana (Renata de Lélis) and Yago (Eduardo Mendonça), a one-night stand that turns into something much longer when they are forced to move in together. Over the following years, Giovana and Yago navigate on to become a couple, have a child, break up without leaving the apartment, virtually date and get back together.
It’s the quiet moments out there The pink cloudthe most powerful. FaceTime calls get annoying, eating the same thing day after day becomes a hindrance, and the only other person in people’s lives starts scratching every nerve. We are not meant to suddenly stop physical contact with the rest of the world, and the cataclysmic consequences of being cut off from everyone and everyone is quietly destructive. Life suddenly seems to speed up and slow down all at once. Giovana goes from being a staunch opponent of children to having a child, waiting for the deadly cloud to dissipate as he settles into household routines because there is no other way to live.
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Central to this is the internal battle between the unending hope that things will get better and the sinking realization that there is no end in sight. People switch careers to find something to do at home, learn new skills, watch way too much TV, play too many games, find virtual boyfriends and girlfriends, and go to school at home. Children are born in the void and know nothing about the outside world other than what they can see from their window. Adults who remember being before the clouds dream of returning to the world they once knew while working to make their new living conditions the best they can be.
The pink cloud supposed to be a science fiction story, a dystopian world quietly asking, “How would you handle this situation?” Looking at the film in 2021, the answer is obvious: I don’t have to wonder how I was going to deal with it, I know exactly how I coped that I haven’t been able to have relatives or certain friends for almost a year see. But even with the “fiction” aspect of it The pink cloudWith the sci-fi setting removed, the movie still hits the hardest part of Giovana and Yago’s ordeal, one that I still grapple with and I’m sure millions of other people are too.
When does it all end? How much optimism can a person have that eventually the pandemic – the pink cloud – will simply disappear and life will return to normal? What even goes back to normal mean? At a time when I turned to movies to try to escape or find answers to problems beyond my control, The pink cloud is a reminder of our daily life for the past 300 days, and it does not provide an immediate answer.
Turns out, The pink cloud was just the movie I needed. I devoured watching this couple struggling with the same internal struggles of hope and acceptance, desires and occupation, fond memories of the past, and preparation for what comes next. The pink cloud, a film written about 1,100 days before the pandemic, ironically became a way for me to digest so much of what happened in 2020.