The Blue Trail

This is a rebellious, empathetic adventure story about a grandmother who catches on that her society needs to learn how to think freely.

Few films this year have been as soulful or as quietly defiant.

Mascaro’s wry and witty new film will remind savvy audiences of bleak apocalyptic films about humanity’s potential loss of feeling against technologies that crush them.

The “Neon Bull” director has always had an incredible visual sense, though his plots tend to lack focus. Not this one.

Credit to both Weinberg’s no-nonsense performance and the director’s surrealist instincts. There is a late sequence in this film, wherein Tereza visits a floating casino, that contains some of the most vividly beautiful images I’ve seen so far this year.

The Blue Trail is a generic mashup: it partly has the bittersweet tone of many films about defiant old people, and partly it has something far more subversive and disquieting. The mix of tones is interesting, like chewing cake and cheese at the same time.

The Blue Trail, despite its many narrative flaws, stands out for a striking visual style and ability to ask uncomfortable questions about aging and autonomy.