Review | The Fallout (2021)
- Pê Dias
- Jan 17
- 4 min read
“I don't know, do you always have to be right?”
*film available on Max streaming
Between 2020 and 2021 I subscribed to the newspaper El País, whose newsroom ended up closing in Brazil, and in one of its editions I came across an interactive map of the USA which, by hovering the mouse cursor over the red dots, gave us access to data on cases of shootings in American schools. It was bizarre, terrifying and unbelievable. Hundreds of cases over decades, and surely what was and still is in the media is a tiny fraction of what happens.
Cinema has a history of productions, in my opinion very good ones, that deal with these (announced?) tragedies, both in the USA and in the rest of the world: Columbine (2002, Michael Moore), Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant), Utoya and July 22 (2018, Erik Poppe and Paul Greengrass) and the one that really got me talking, We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011, Lynne Ramsay), which dared to show the “afterlife” of the killer's mother.
I've watched them all and I would venture to say that The Fallout, which could be translated as The Consequence, The Result or The Aftermath, and this time I liked the Portuguese translation better, would be the most delicate and intimate of all the films I've seen. A gem that portrays the adolescent journey of coming of age in the face of an incomprehensible event, with a strong political and social background.
Four teenagers in their 16s, Vada (Jenna Ortega), Mia (Maddie Ziegler), Quinton (Niles Fitch) and Nick (Will Ropp), all present at the tragic moment, each in their own way deal with this trauma.
The theme of the film alone reveals absurd violence, the kind that leads to countless deaths, in an environment where friendship, small contrasts and confrontations, knowledge, welcome and safety, whether physical or psychological, should prevail. Director Megan Park, in her first feature and here also a screenwriter, presents us with the total horror experienced by Vada, Mia and Quinton in the toilet cubicle, without any expository scenes and with impressive performances from these actors. The old story that suggestion can be more terrifying than rolling heads or sprawling bodies. The bathroom scene, where we hear everything that's going on, puts us in a position of deep empathy with our characters and all those out in the field.
But the film really begins with sunny, cheerful, vibrant images in which we see what Vada and Nick's school life is like, those banal teenage lives, school, enlightened, distressing too, pulsating sexualities, everything as it should be.
However, the unthinkable happens, and now what? How do you deal with it? If all the inner madness of teenage life wasn't enough, facing an outside world in tatters, just like that, overnight.
Our characters then start their own private battles: Nick militates against arms policy, Quinton deals with the grief of physical loss, Vada and Mia get closer, discover each other, fall in love. From this encounter come the most affectionate, delicate, intimate and welcoming images in the story. A little choreography in the pool, glances in search of an understanding of the world, complicity, bottles and bottles of wine, the use of some hallucinogens (delicious comic scenes) and, yes, disagreements due to a lack of repertoire for dealing with terrible pain.
The director doesn't shy away from showing how the families of some of the characters deal with the events. One of them doesn't know what to do with the absurdity that is finally knocking on their door, while the other is totally absent. An absence that is still a way of coping, whether we like it or not.
The film has few scenes at night, in which we glimpse Vada's nightmares, Mia's insomnia, her anguish and deep loneliness. Moving on with life, coming to terms with the tragedy, trying to make sense of the loss, take place in the sunny scenes, in the scenes with lots of life around.
I'm particularly fond of actress Shailene Woodley, who has a small part here, whose character Anna conveys affection and welcome in her gaze and words, taking Vada out of her capsule, where “everything is fine, but I'm not feeling anything”.
Honorable mention goes to actress Lumi Polack and her character Amelia as Vada's younger sister, with her wonderful lines, humor and intelligence, who even though she doesn't go to the same school as her sister, takes a while to understand the weight of what has happened. A show of interpretation.
Life after these characters moves on as expected, the return to school postponed for a while can also be traumatic. Things settle down and calm down, even if only on the surface. At the end, in a very interesting scene, the director leaves the more intimate setting and makes room for the social and political tragedy to show us that what happened is far from over.
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