If you’re looking for a movie that takes you straight to the 80s’ neon glow, its mix tapes and to the feeling that everything is happening for the first time, Califórnia is the right choice.
The story, directed by Marina Person, follows teenaged Estela, who is trying to survive friendships, school and her own body. At the same time she is balancing between two boys – sunny Xande and gloomy JM – while trying to understand who she is. Estela dreams about visiting her uncle in California, a place that symbolises freedom and everything that Brazil isn’t – or wasn’t at the time. But when her uncle returns to Brazil weak and sick, Estela’s plans take a new, more poignant direction.
Califórnia is an exceptional depiction of youth: honest, warm and full of life’s messy energy. It reminds us that adolescence contains dreams and meltdowns at the same and that sometimes the biggest journey happens when you’re not traveling. Person situates her debut to her home town of São Paulo – it’s a love letter to a city where her father Luiz Sérgio Person filmed the classic cinema novo film São Paulo, Incorporated (São Paulo Sociedade Anônima, 1965).
Soundtrack full of David Bowie, The Cure, Joy Division and Cocteau Twins completes the picture and functions both as Estela’s inner compass and as a time capsule to another world.
Otto Kylmälä