Carnival is Over Mini-Review #TIFF2024

CW: this review contains discussion of sexual violence

Carnival is Over certainly starts strong. 

Regina (Leandra Leal) and Valério (Pêpê Rapazote) are a couple unhappy with their social standing. Valério lives in the shadow of his criminal kingpin uncle, monotonously managing bribes to officials with codenames like “Robocop” and “Captain America.” His lust for power seeps into the couple’s sex life, the kinky scene that opens the film has Valério roleplaying a burglar who has broken in to assault Regina.

Valério and Regina hatch a plan to kill Valério’s uncle and take the throne of his criminal empire, but as you can imagine, things don’t go exactly as planned. 

If this set up sounds familiar, it’s because Carnival is Over is a loose, Brazil-set adaptation of Shakespeare’s MacBeth. The film has some fun with the play’s elements: the witches are swapped out for a self-serving fortune teller, and there’s a good twist on Lady Macbeth’s “damned spot.”

Director Fernando Coimbra is well- tuned to the movie’s darkly comic tone. His visual style is restrained, and his muted color palette pops with the blue of the couples dance hall or the deep red of blood. With this restraint, it’s all the more surprising when the movie drops a deadpan punchline or visual gag - there’s lots of big laughs in the first half.

As it goes however, Carnival is Over moves into a darker tone, and that’s where the problems begin. Without the sly humor, the movie is inert. There’s not enough depth to the characters or narrative momentum to keep us interested. Furthermore, the movie betrays what it’s established of one of our main characters. 

I understand that for the story to work, Valério must go from bumbling criminal to hardened killer, but the shift happens way too fast. A disturbing rape scene announces Valério’s turn to the dark side, and I could practically hear it draining goodwill from my audience. Carnival is Over is never a slog, but Coimbra’s muted instincts get tiresome when there’s so little to latch onto.

Luckily, Leal is a saving grace. She’s very funny in the first half - Regina does not have the nerves for this sort of criminal conspiracy - and Leal plays her frantic energy beautifully. As the movie switches gears, Leal injects real pathos into Regina’s plight. With a weaker performance the movie could have turned really dire.

All that being said, Carnival is Over deserves points for how nasty and surprising its climax is. Though not overplayed, the dark humor definitely creeps its way back into the film. This final scene is tense and disturbing but also loaded with dramatic irony. The tension explodes into brutal violence but also elicits some well-earned shock-laughs. If the second half could have sustained this sort of tonal balance throughout, we would have really had something here.