INFINITE SEA (MAR INFINITO) – Review

If you’re in the mood for an ethereal blank slate of a movie that’s more about mood than movement, INFINITE SEA (MAR INFINITO) might be your ticket. It’s set in a gray dystopian future or alternate reality. A handful of characters remain in a largely abandoned city. The lights are still on, but hardly anyone is at home. Most have been selected for space travel to colonize other worlds light-years away. Nuno Nolasco stars as a young man who was rejected by whoever is picking the pilgrims, and now spends his life trying to hack into that system to create a spot for himself. He meets a waiflike woman (Maria Leite) who may or may not help him achieve that goal.

Though only 78 minutes, the film seems longer, as eerie music and barren surroundings dominate over words and deeds. The film’s tone is more melancholy than Kirsten Dunst’s MELANCHOLIA. Everything is so ill-defined that viewers are free to write their own movies, with plenty of room for speculation on what they believe to be “reality” vs. dreams of the players. Nolasco wistfully watches rockets in the distance, presumably carrying new sets of pioneers to Captain Kirk’s Final Frontier. Or maybe he’s already in one of the vessels, and all we’re seeing is the result of brain activity stimulated during whatever form of stasis they need to survive the many years in transit.

The film is long on imagery and short on conclusions. The two spend a lot of time in water, sometimes drifting submerged in a womblike state. When not in the empty urban area, they wander in a marshy seaside that’s even more bleak and barren than the city. This is a prime example of art-house cinema, designed to stimulate discussions about what it all meant that may run longer than the source material. Writer/director Carlos Amaral presumably maintained all the vagueness he could towards that end. He succeeded. I’m still not sure what it all meant, but was intrigued enough to keep thinking about it.

Though mostly in Portuguese with subtitles, the reading-averse need not be discouraged. Far more time is spent in silence than in conversation. The minimal dialogue eases the burden for those who chafe at the effort. And since it’s streaming, one can easily go back for any visuals missed while looking at letters.

1 1/2 stars out of 4

INFINITE SEA (MAR INFINITO), mostly in Portuguese with subtitles, streams on Amazon Prime March 24, 2023.