‘Toll’: Review

Dir/scr: Carolina Markowicz. Brazil/Portugal. 2023. 101mins

A mother’s fierce conviction that she knows best for her teenage son fuels the compelling human drama of Carolina Markowicz’s impressive second feature Toll, in which the particular family dynamic of well-intentioned actions and unexpected consequences illuminates a wider Brazil riven by deep-rooted prejudices. The appealing mixture of social realism and social satire won Best Film at Rome, continuing a successful festival run for a film that has some commercial potential.

 Appealing mixture of social realism and social satire 

Arriving hot on the heels of Markowitz’s first feature Charcoal (2022), Toll focuses on Suellen (Maeve Jinkings), a motorway toll booth operator in the heavily-polluted Brazilian city of Cubatao. Cinematographer Luis Armando Arteaga captures a pungent sense of a misty, rain-sodden small-town setting where belching chimneys, sprawling pipelines and burning flares mark an industrial heartland. Suellen’s 17 year-old gay son Antonio (Kauan Alvarenga) is a ray of sunshine in their drab, dingy home. He is never happier than when he is in his Barbie-pink room, posting videos of his seductive lip-synching to Billie Holiday’s performance of ’It Had To Be You’.

His every action, however, seems to be an affront to his mother’s sense of what a man should be. Her shame is reinforced by the attitudes of others, including her colleague Telma (Aline Marta Maia). Suellen concludes that lighting a candle to the gods of virility and securing Antonio a job as a forklift truck operator might not be enough to sort him out. When Telma mentions a forthcoming visit from Pastor Isaac (Isac Graca) and his gay conversion therapy, it seems to be an answer to her prayers. Finding the money to pay for the therapy leads her into a life of crime.

Toll is very effective at conveying the hypocrisy of those who feel they have the right to judge others. The pious Telma has been married for almost 40 years and has an annual blessing for her union, but that doesn’t stop her fondness for alfresco sex with any willing stranger who catches her eye. Suellen’s relationship with feckless thief Arauto (Thomas Aquino) does not suggest that she intends to lead by example either. There is a sense running through the film of everyone leading messy, contradictory lives but still feeling they have the right to claim the moral high ground. 

Markowicz’s screenplay is alive to life’s little ironies. Characters are accepted for who they are. We know that every misguided thing that Suellen does is done in the name of love. Serious-minded but never sombre, Toll has a welcome strain of absurdist humour, not least in the therapy sessions of poker-faced, Jesus-lookalike Pastor Isaac. There are laughs to be found in the ridiculous concepts of gender and sexual identity that he presents to a packed room; little he says is any more ridiculous than some of the observations from conservative Brazilian politicians in recent years. Antonio, meanwhile, is doing the best to be himself, living his best life dressed in head-to-toe scarlet while performing as part of the energetic entertainment at a children’s birthday party.

Well-paced and with a light touch, Toll is persuasively acted. Maeve Jinking’s stoical, hard-working Suellen remains sympathetic even as she wades into deep trouble. Kauan Alvarenga’s Antonio has the sulky manner of a typical teenager, but also an expressive repertoire of sighs, stares and eye-rolling to convey his exasperation at being hounded to live his life in a way that is completely unacceptable to him. Both actors convince us that the bond between mother and son is strong enough to endure whatever might happen. That provides the film with a welcome sense of optimism for reconciliation and a better future.