I’m not sure what I expected from feature from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro. For some reason I thought it had elements of magical realism, probably something to do with the image above (that I obviously didn’t look at closely).

It is set in a dystopian near future, where productivity is God and, when people become elderly, they are stripped of their autonomy and must go to the colony.

Tereza (Denise Weinberg) is 77, three years off the mandatory age for colonisation. She is productive, working in an alligator processing factory, and has a grown-up daughter and grandchild. One day government workers attach decorations to her doorway and give her a medal for being a ‘living treasure’. I think she is aware that it is a precursor to something that is not going to be good.

Sure enough, the age for going to the colony is brought forward and she has one week left before she must leave. She is put into the custody of her daughter and immediately loses her job so that she “can rest, and achieve all of the things that she wanted to in her life but couldn’t because she was working.”

Tereza seems a bit non-plussed by this, the only thing she can fix her mind on is that she wants to fly in a plane. She can’t buy a ticket though, as to spend any money she needs the authorisation of her daughter. You can start to see the inklings of the challenges that older people face when they must give up their autonomy, what it must be like to be told that you are no longer useful and can’t be trusted to manage your own affairs.

Tereza is feisty and bullish though, and she finds a way to set off on an adventure. It’s not always easy-going, and when she talks her way onto the boat of Cadu (Rodrigo Santoro from Love Actually, I kept looking at him thinking I know that face), she learns some useful skills.

Cadu finds a ‘blue drool snail’ and shows her that dropping some of the snail’s blue drool into your eye will help you see the future. And although Tereza is sceptical, you can see she is deeply rooted in pragmatism, this will light a spark that will change her future path.

There are some really great aspects to this. The metaphor of what happens when we get older is not a subtle one, but depicted here in the extreme, you can see just quite how demeaning and disorienting it must be. The scene with the diapers nappies and how it represents the group think of nursing homes really encapsulates everything about what could be expected from the colony.

There are some beautiful scenes with rivers and boats and far flung communities. Along the way, Tereza meets Roberta (Miriam Socarras), a kick-ass boat captain and adventurer and this is where she really hits her stride. There is genuine tension built as we are not quite sure where Tereza is going and where she will end up. What I can say though, is she finds her blue trail.