Too close to the fire

A poor Brazilian family get an offer they can’t refuse.

CHARCOAL Directed by Carolina Markowicz

Charcoal is an impressively assured first feature for Brazilian film director and screenwriter Carolina Markowicz, who delivers an intermittently tense thriller and social drama about ordinary people turning to crime.

Life in a small rural village is tough for Brazilian chicken farmer Irene (an excellent Maeve Jinkings). She’s burdened by an uncaring and useless husband Jairo (Rômulo Braga), whose seasonal charcoal-making business is struggling, and a wilful 8-year-old son Jean ( Jean de Almeida Costa). She is also caring at home for her elderly father Firmino (Benedito Alves), who has been rendered speechless, infirm and oxygen tank-dependent by a stroke. So, it’s perhaps understandable that when a visiting healthcare worker makes Irene an offer too good to refuse, she accepts.

She agrees to harbour an Argentine drug dealer Miguel (César Bordón) who needs to go into hiding after faking his death. Finding space for him in their humble abode presents the family with a transgressive challenge. And when their small community starts noticing that the poor family has come into a bit of money, the subterfuge becomes harder and more dangerous to maintain.

Shot in a painfully realistic setting and using professional as well as nonactors, Markowicz cannily eschews any soundtrack or cinematic flourishes to evince a naturalistic story that is quietly engrossing. As strong-willed Irene, Jenkings’ wonderful performance is a highlight. Her son, first-time actor de Almeida Costa is amazingly assured.

Charcoal doesn’t reach the gripping heights of say, Ozark or Breaking Bad as it pushes its morally compromised family towards an unexpected denouement, but it’s an intriguing and tense portrait of push coming to shove.

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