The invincible feeling of adolescence, the hormonal pull of sex, the chastising hand of religion, and the grim reminder of mortality that comes when faced with death are just some of the ideas director Anita Rocha da Silveira grapples with in “Kill Me Please.” An ambitious film that aims to be as provocative as its title, Silveira’s feature debut is high on atmosphere but struggles to find a conclusion to tie together its various narrative strands, which all spring from a serial killer tale at its core. There’s something to admire in the director’s reach, even if it doesn’t always fully grasp its themes, and the visuals are often striking, but the stylized filmmaking does little to hide the emptiness at the core of the picture.
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It’s summer in Rio De Janiero, and a serial killer is on the loose, brutally raping and killing young women. But it hardly seems to trouble Bia (Valentina Herszage), Michele (Julia Roliz), Mariana (Mariana Oliveira) and Renata (Dora Freind), who spin morbid theories about the murders, talk about boys, share their dreams, and idle away the hours as any teenagers would. The crimes are just another topic of conversation, an abstraction to their lives, which seem mostly to be consumed by sex.
Bia is the most experienced and confident of the quartet, slipping into high school bathroom stalls to give head to her boyfriend Pedro (Vitor Mayer), whose Christian guilt only escalates each time they sleep together. Michele is keeping an eye on the horizon for a potential mate, and the slightly overweight Renata takes the Barb-from-“Stranger-Things” role, as the good hearted, but less adventurous one of the group. Meanwhile, Mariana pines for Bia’s older brother Joao (Bernardo Marinho), an oddball loner who spends day and night at the computer, waiting for some kind of acknowledgement of the string of unanswered messages he’s sent to a girl that he can’t get over. And his late night skulking and strange behavior also makes him a prime candidate as the killer who’s at large.
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However, “Kill Me Please” is less about discovering the identity or motivations of the killer, than in drawing connective lines between sex and death. Bia in particular grows obsessed rather than fearful as the bodies pile up, even as the murders draw ever closer when classmates start going missing. When she stumbles across the body of a victim with her friends, it only spurs her fascination further, to the detriment of her relationships, and arguably, her emotional well being. The realization that an outside force could cut down her liberty at will, only seems to push Bia’s uninhibited behavior further, almost as if she’s trying to experience everything possible, in case it gets suddenly taken away. Grief and fear can certainly manifest in strange ways, but the film never quite cohesively brings together any of the themes it presents.
Silveira sets herself up for a balance between realism and aesthetics that she can’t quite navigate. With adults completely absent from the movie, there’s a clear desire to intensely explore the intimate realities, fears, and passions of teenage girls. But there is an emotional chasm the film can’t overcome, as the picture’s moodiness often keeps the characters at arm’s length, while the tone wavers between drama and thriller without satisfying either. Thus when the thinly plotted movie starts making a number of large leaps in the final twenty minutes, the picture starts unraveling, and decisions made by some characters feel unrealistic or contrived for dramatic effect. Still, the imagery from cinematographer João Atala is undeniably gorgeous, and the score from Bernardo Uzeda evokes Cliff Martinez’s best work for Nicolas Winding Refn. But even as the film ends on a stunning, extended still shot, when the title “Kill Me Please” is splashed across the entire screen in huge letters (for the second time) it doesn’t have the impact Silveira was likely looking for.
“Kill Me Please” is content to leave questions unanswered and to embrace ambiguity, but in doing so, it misunderstands one of the fundamental aspects of adolescence. Coming-of-age is often about grappling with the world in order to prepare for what lies ahead, and find your place within it. Bia, Michele, Mariana and Renata navel-gaze, and are largely unwilling or unable to see beyond their immediate experience. Self-absorption is certainly a condition of the teenage life, but so too is curiosity, and a little sense of wonder would’ve gone a long way here. [C]
