At a certain point in “Entroncamento,” Laura (Ana Vilaça) decides to take matters into her own hands with Fama (Tiago Costa), who most others fear in the small Portuguese town of the title, but she’s unintimidated by. Leaning into whisper into his ear part-seduction, part-friendly suggestion, it’s usually the ones who are the quietest that are the most powerful, she coos as she gives him a suspicious once-over when with his dreadlocks and neon green tracksuit that attract attention he may not have to hide the fact he’s a drug dealer, but he may also not be taken quite as seriously as he could be. It’s clear from the exchange that Laura is right, holding the upper hand in spite of having none of the connections that Fama does and influencing him as much with reason as with the potential for sex and having the best foresight of anyone around because she knows exactly where she stands.
Pablo Cabeleira’s low-key stunner of a second feature when it’s as observant of where power comes from as Laura is, embedding in a place rampant with low-level crime and desperation where nothing is bound to change when everyone is so busy trying to hold onto what little they have. Despite being the focus of the film, Laura hasn’t shown up in town just yet when the drama begins during a drug deal that goes awry. Nadia (Cleo Diara) is dragged along by her boyfriend Virglio (Carlos Carvalho) to help sell some hash, but Matreno (Rafael Morais), a soldier for Fama, isn’t prepared to pay the $5,000 that the two agreed upon, especially after a friend is skeptical about its quality, and believes he has leverage, given the connection Nadia and Virglio have with the long-marginalized Romani community, thinking they should be grateful for any offer at all. It isn’t obvious what this has to do with Laura at first when she’s introduced shortly after on a train into town, but she actively is trying to put her own Romani upbringing in the rearview and is revealed to have a more direct connection to Nadia since her cousin Bruno (Sergio Coragem) is the father to her child and still shares custody.
The fact that Bruno wants to hold onto his daughter a little longer than his visitation rights would allow is among the microaggressions that hold as much tension as the grander shows of force that occur as “Entroncamento” wears on when Cabeleira and co-writer Diogo S. Figueira are primarily concerned with what people can get away with, whether or not it’s good for themselves, let alone others. That curiosity gives way to a far more fascinating crime film than the norm as Laura gradually finds more success as a criminal mastermind than in the warehouse job she takes to help Bruno pay his rent, somewhat bereft of the ambition that fuels the others in Fama’s operation but emboldened by having nothing to lose unlike everyone around her who fail to recognize they’re essentially in the same boat.
Vilaça gives a muscular turn as the street-savvy heroine who slowly acclimates to her new surroundings, showing her ability to hold the screen from a striking scene early where Laura can overhear a drug deal going down and expressing with her eyes alone an understanding of why it’s happening and the need to keep quiet about it, yet the disappointment that she ended up in such a situation in the first place. That sense of resignation hangs over “Entroncamento” where characters all rationalize what moral compromises they make with the idea that there’s no escaping their circumstances. (When the idea of robberies enters the mix to boost profits, Fama is prideful that he’s never done anything like that, building his minor drug empire without hurting anyone, overlooking the violence that’s surely been a part of the business.) While the locals may feel stuck in their surroundings, Cabeleira is able to free them of usual genre conventions when the film so acutely shows how their attitudes towards crime are shaped by other parts of their experience and in an area seen as a dead end, the director sees plenty of possibilities.
“Entroncamento” will screen again at the Cannes Film Festival as part of ACID on May 20th at 4:15 pm at the Alexandre III.