Cláudia Varejão’s alluring and intimate Wolf and Dog is a richly detailed, and powerful portrait of an island and community that continually blurs the line between fiction and documentary, and slowly emerges as a quiet act of queer resistance. The inspiration for the São Miguel-based drama comes from the director’s first-hand experience visiting the remote island, the largest in the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. Previously known as a documentary filmmaker, Varejão’s desire in all of her work is to tell stories about real people and this is no different in her first narrative feature, working with a largely inexperienced cast and pulled from within the island’s indigenous and queer communities.
Wolf and Dog is ostensibly a multi-stranded, coming-of-age tale that focuses on the disparate but connected lives of a group of teenagers, particularly the complications and conflicts that arise out of their gender and sexual identities in a society still clinging to traditional social norms. The cryptic title is a neat summation of the duality that is present in these character’s lives, namely the tension between wildness and domesticity. These are characters in pursuit of their authentic selves and the film has a beautifully searching quality. The fulcrum of the story is Ana (Ana Cabral), a young woman who lives with her mother and grandmother in a society where traditional gender roles are still expected to be upheld. It is clear that Ana is full of unfulfilled dreams and aspirations. She is often shown looking out at an unspecified horizon, but what she is searching for is not immediately clear. That is until the sudden arrival of her friend Cloe (Cristiana Branquinho), who was born on the island, but like many Azoreans, emigrated to Canada. Cloe gives Ana a glimpse of what personal and sexual freedom might look like, and it is an invigorating and tender evocation of queer discovery.
Ana’s best friend Luis (Ruben Pimenta) is defiantly queer and gender fluid, representing the possibilities of a freer model of masculinity. On the surface, he has seemingly found the freedom that Ana has been desperately seeking, but he also has as much of a desire for belonging as he has to escape. This tension is exemplified by his involvement in the Easter pilgrimage of the Romeiros, an Azorean tradition which involves groups of men, both young and old, from all over the island coming together and walking around the island. It is here that we witness the film’s most affecting and emotionally potent sequences with Varejão giving us a glimpse into this traditional ritual of maleness and the tensions that arise within Luis as he tries to navigate his own gender identity.
As much as the story is tethered to a hard-bitten, culturally specific realism, there is also an uncanny and folkloric atmosphere to the island. Chickens have been dying mysteriously, we hear stories of a woman who drowned herself, and the umbilical cords of newborn baby girls being burnt so they would grow up knowing their place. The pacing is slow and dreamy which may test the patience of some viewers as the narrative oscillates fluidly between different characters. The drug trafficking exploits of Ana’s brother Telmo (João Tavares), which coincidentally is the only narrative thread that isn’t brushed with queerness, is less convincing and compelling but for all of these characters, there is a common thread. The future is both tantalisingly in sight and also out of reach, with the promise of freedom cruelly teased by the roaring sound of planes passing overhead but all of these characters represent possibilities of escape. Varejão is also keen to show us the joy in living authentically, most notably in a series of visually intoxicating musical sequences. The characters, lost in a hypnotic trance of limbs, sound and movement, are at their freest. Wolf and Dog is a film to be felt first, with a sensory focus on shimmering textures, atmosphere and vibrant colours, which gives it a cumulative, mesmerising power. This is a poignant celebration of the courageousness that lies in being queer in the face of opposing forces.
