Cinematic Releases: The Pink Cloud (2021) - Reviewed

Courtesy of Prana Filmes

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, so too are a flurry of films being made in response to it.  The year started with Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth, followed by Bo Burnham: Inside as well as a slew of romantic comedies such as Locked Down and Together along with some Covidsploitation with fare like Songbird and the more recently released Shelter in Place.  The latest cinematic contribution to discourse over what it means to experience and live through an ongoing pandemic comes from the Brazilians with newcomer writer-director Iuli Gerbase in her Portuguese directorial debut film A Nuvem Rosa or The Pink Cloud about a mysterious global weather phenomenon involving pink clouds that causes anyone who sets foot outdoors in the open to die instantly, forcing everyone indoors for an indeterminate duration. 

Playing like a science-fiction horror episode of 90 Day Fiance which is also grappling with the still unraveling pandemic, the catch here is that a young female web designer named Giovana (Renata de Lélis) awakens the morning after a one-night stand with a stranger chiropractor named Yago (Eduardo Mendonça) to learn she can’t leave his apartment due to lockdown protocols.  Confined within the apartment, the two find themselves fraught with emotional turmoil, boredom and creeping malaise as they try to make the most of their day-to-day routine which seems to gradually turn further and further upside down.  All the while the cloud formations show no sign of stopping, even replicating to a suffocating degree as groceries soon start being delivered through an ornate filtration system so people don’t go hungry while trapped indoors.

Incredibly, the film was supposedly written in 2017 and completed filming in 2019 before, like so many films before it, The Pink Cloud became enmeshed in ongoing COVID-19 release date delays.  Looking at the film now, which turned out to accidentally be so prescient about what the so-called “new normal” was going to be like it comes as a shock that Iuli Gerbase seemed to have such keen foresight on the public health crisis that continues to grip the globe.  A chamber piece about what happens when you lock humans up together with no light at the end of the tunnel suggesting there’s an escape or relief, the film winds up being an insightful rumination on the cataclysmic life altering changes mankind faced back in March 2020.

Given the film’s title replete with visually arresting vistas of pink clouds forming that feel like you really are looking up in the sky, The Pink Cloud as you probably guessed is heavy on the pink leaning color timing thanks to panoramic cinematography by Bruno Polidoro.  Also aiding the film’s sense of unnatural natural phenomenon spreading like wildfire is the film’s minimalist score by Caio Amon which give the proceedings an ironic quality, making this global plague that inexplicably leaves animal life unharmed oddly kind of beautiful, even uplifting to look at.  In other words the film makes completely alluring the very things that can kill you just by gazing upon it.

The two lead performers do an excellent job of expressing the feelings of exhausting depression that comes from cabin fever with a very real look of boredom on the actors faces.  Much of the film’s conversations are had through tablets, cellular phones and facetime, again predating what would become the norm with the proliferation of ZOOM group video conferences and podcasts.  That this seemed to capture the essence of what makes up our post-COVID world almost three years before it actually happened is more than a little unsettling when it isn’t utterly astonishing.  Released now after festival screenings and ongoing delays, the film stings hard and leaves a mark that throbs with pain over the course of the movie.

While Covidsploitation is indeed a thing and most moviegoers go to the cinema for escapism, the film world is also responding to the pandemic in intelligent and thoughtful ways trying to make sense of the madness we’ve found ourselves in.  Like the characters in The Pink Cloud, we can’t help but gaze off into the distance, wanting to participate in regular life again but feeling a glass pane separating us from the invisible dangers wafting about in the air.  Looking at what has come since, the aforementioned Mr. Wheatley’s In the Earth still ranks higher as a film that started out as a reaction to COVID before making its ascendency into high kinetic art.  But for what its worth, The Pink Cloud represents an indelible contribution to the conversation about what to do in the face of a global health emergency and is like looking at blurred reflection in the mirror.

--Andrew Kotwicki