Dead Princess of Jacuí

(Princesa Morta do Jacuí, Marcela Ilha Bordin, Brazil, 2018)

A certain way of making cheap science-fiction movies began in 1950s Hollywood, but was radicalised by Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker and Raúl Ruiz. This intriguing genre has found especially fertile soil in the Brazilian cinema of the 21^st century.

Marcela Ilha Bordin is a director and screenwriter associated with both commercial work and, in her words, “research for visual narratives and creative processes in cinema”. Her most recent film is Backlands, America (2023).

In the 17 minutes of Dead Princess of Jacuí, we see an explorer in a protective suit, haunted by childhood trauma, pacing through abandoned fields strewn with industrial junk. She is an archaeologist, Margot Moreira, returning to this “zone of exclusion” which is also the place of her birth.

Special effects evoke a disquieting, artificially constructed world of eternal daylight. Soon there are repeated apparitions of a strange Princess.

It is, to my mind, a free variation on Adolfo Bioy Casares’ classic novel Morel’s Invention (1940) – from which so many modern films flow! – with some contemporary tweaks regarding gender and ecological catastrophe.

© Adrian Martin 22 August 2019 / 6 February 2024