[WQ40] The Devil Queen [2024-04-14]

[hermionesviolin]

THROWBACK FROM 1974
THE DEVIL QUEEN (A RAINHA DIABA)
Sunday Apr 14 @ 9:00 pm
Brattle Theater

Crime queen and drug dealer, Diaba finds out that the police are after his protégé and decides to "make up" a new bandit to turn in in his place.

This film is presented in Portuguese with English subtitles.

Not my kind of thing, but we saw pretty much all the Brazilian films in the festival for Abby reasons.

WQ's blurb: "Imagine it is Brazil, 1974. Okay now imagine if John Waters and Pulp Fiction had a gay child who is campy, transgressive and loves drag and crime. That child is this film. That feeling you’re getting? We got it too and are so excited to share this throwback with you!"

That got me more excited about the film, but I should have taken the Pulp Fiction part of that more seriously. I hid my face for various violent scenes.

Shawn (WQ Executive Director), in chatting with us after the Brazilian trans woman movie, said it's a "be gay, do crimes" movie. But watching it myself, the Queen is mostly reactive/acted upon, with straight people doing most of the crimes, so I felt somewhat misled.

I did appreciate that everyone used "she" pronouns for the Queen -- even when they were also calling her a fag.

When it showed at the London ICA last year, the ICA said:

The Devil Queen is loosely based on the persona of Madame Satã (“Madam Satan,” a name adapted from the Cecil B. DeMille film), ex-slave, drag performer, trans icon, biological father of seven, convicted murderer and legendary cabaret performer who was an outlaw hero of Rio’s 1930’s underground.

Which was really exciting to me, and I totally would have watched a biopic about Madame Satã -- or even a fictionalized narrative about her; but as stated above, she doesn't get to take up a lot of narrative space.

spoilers:

It's 1974, so I wasn't surprised that the Queen had to die at the end, but it was still a little disappointing.

I really appreciated the scene where she's throwing a party for her queer community (after her crime lord posse has betrayed her) and they rally in support of her. I would have watched a whole move about the Queen's relationship with her queer community.

I don't know if the flatness of Isa's character is because it's a male writer/director in 1974, or an intentional choice. I definitely had a moment early on of being like, "Are you just playing Bereco? Because I have no reason to believe you would actually be this into him" -- but I think I was supposed to believe she was really that into him? Especially given her loyalty under torture at the end (which was probably at least in part just her own personality -- and I wanted to believe the film was making an intentional statement about her response under threat versus his, but I honestly wasn't sure). Which, speaking of, I hated not just the torture but also the fact that the one scene where a group of queers take power ... their victim is a woman.