If
Hollywood were to remake this Brazilian horror movie, it would have to be set
in New York City, because the Big Apple is the only municipality of any size
that is still in the hospital business. Of course, the Federal government has
plenty of hospitals—VA hospitals, but that would drastically alter the subtext
of the film. Apparently, the government of Rio has also decided to get out of
the hospital business, so they are closing the oldest, spookiest facility on its
books. However, a patient will be lost in the transfer process, alerting the
young doctor-turned-bureaucrat in charge of the liquidation to some nefarious goings-on
in J.C. Feyer’s The Trace We Leave Behind
(trailer
here),
which screens during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual Scary Movies
series.
Rio’s
budget has busted, so the governor has ordered liquidation of under-performing
hospitals, starting with the dismally ill-equipped Sao Tome. As fate would have
it, Dr. Joao Rocha served his residency there under Dr. Heitor, the hospital
director before transferring to the Department of Health. He is now tasked with
consolidating patients in the larger, better staffed hospitals. However, Heitor
just defiantly admitted a new patient, Julia de Souza.
Despite
being a pawn in his game with Heitor, Rocha is deeply moved by the abused and
neglected young woman when he meets her during an inspection. He is therefore
rather annoyed when she is “lost” during the patient transfer. Wracked with
guilt, Rocha starts a very noisy and confrontational investigation that turns
up some rather uncomfortable revelations. Apparently, de Souza was already dead
before the patient transfer, but she was never properly admitted in the first
place. In between, she received numerous cat scans and other expensive tests
that Sao Tome is not exactly known for.
Something
in Sao Tome knows what happened. Rocha can literally hear it or them in the
walls. He might be going nuts, but that doesn’t mean he is wrong. In fact,
screenwriters Beatriz Manela and Andre Pereira rather cleverly fused
supernatural horror with a manipulative political conspiracy thriller. It all
works relatively well until it shifts its focus to Rocha’s pregnant wife Leila,
becoming a “woman in jeopardy” thriller in the third act.
Ironically,
Trace is clearly intended as a protest
statement on Brazilian austerity measures, but the more we watch, the more
convinced we become of the justification for shutting down Sao Tome, because it
really is a deeply corrupt and downright evil institution. As a horror movie
location, it is also appealingly creepy and atmospheric. We can see the faded
grandeur and the shadowy lighting is perfect for hauntings.
As
Rocha, Rafael Cardoso is rigid and tightly wound, in a way that befits a
government inspector barging into a horror movie. Leandra Leal is very much the
typically passive pregnant woman in danger, but Jonas Bloch definitely looks
ambiguously distinctive as old Heitor.
There
are a number of creepy moments in Trace, but
its commentary falls flat, at best. Arguably, Feyer loses control over his own
picture, but that is not necessarily a bad thing in this case. In fact, there
is enough here to recommend The Trace We
Leave Behind for fans of Latin American horror, when it screens Tuesday
night (8/21) at the Walter Reade, as part of Scary Movies XI.
