Writer and director Rodrigo de Oliveira’s The First Fallen uses a unique plot structure to tell personal stories of a Brazilian town’s gay community at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The film’s combination of seemingly unrelated vignettes and incredibly vulnerable video journal entries provide an uneven viewing experience, but its final act earns The First Fallen a place in LGBTQ+ and international film collections.
On vacation in his hometown of Vitória, Brazil, forlorn Suzano (Johnny Massaro) stays at his sister Maura’s (Clara Choveaux) beach house. Over the course of several vignettes with friends, family, and ex-lovers, Suzano tells no one what troubles him, though his nephew, Muriel (Alex Bonin), notices something is wrong. Suzano claims to leave for Paris without telling anyone. When he returns to Vitória, he exhibits the cancerous, purple lesions of kaposi sarcoma – a telltale sign of AIDS.
The First Fallen shifts from a series of vignettes about gay life in Vitória at the dawn of the 1980s to a cinema-verite-style documentation of three friends fighting a disease with no name.
This act of the film addresses the personal ravages of AIDS - this isn’t the story of grassroots activists or epidemiologists but of Humberto (Victor Camilo), Rose (Renata Carvalho), and Suzano. These two gay men and one trans woman take care of each other and grieve together through a pivotal time of fear and hope. In their self-proclaimed “Sanatorium for Cancerous Fairies,” the trio conduct their own medicinal trials and recite Tennessee Williams. “We don’t know what we have, we don’t know how we got it, we don’t know how to cure it. We’re just trying,” they tell the camera, breaking the fourth wall.
De Oliviera’s screenplay does somewhat rely on the audience having a knowledge of history - a surreal sentence to type about a decade as recent as the 1980s—for the story to carry any dramatic tension through the vaguely connected first hour. With subtitles reminding the viewer of the date (ranging from 1982 through ’84) in a movie about a community of gay people, the trajectory for the film is sadly unspoken yet clear: this is the beginning of the end for many of these characters. Though audiences will appreciate a story about the LGBTQ+ community of the early ‘80s that doesn’t lean into the melodrama or condescend to its audience, the poignant final third of the film proves superior to the slightly disinteresting and emotionally inaccessible majority.
The First Fallen would be an unexpected but effective pick for media librarians to program for Pride Month, World AIDS Day, or just an arthouse movie night for adults. (While a broad age range could learn from the film’s historical and emotional aspects, its sensual scenes would fare better with a mature audience.) Rodrigo de Oliviera’s film packs an emotional punch with an impressive third act that overcomes the first two, painting a portrait of a small Brazilian group’s personal losses on the eve of a global tragedy. The First Fallen gives audiences an opportunity to experience a dark time in LGBTQ+ history from perspectives not often seen onscreen.
What kind of film collection would The First Fallen be suitable for?
The First Fallen would be suitable for LGBTQ+, Latinx, independent, and international film collections.
What unexpected responses do you think audiences would have to The First Fallen?
While initially slower-paced, audiences might be surprised by the overall emotional impact of The First Fallen's story of a community in the face of death.
What type of college/university professors would find The First Fallen valuable?
History professors might find The First Fallen valuable for its realistic, personal portrayal of the beginnings of an important historical event—the AIDS crisis. Professors in the medical field might also want to screen The First Fallen for students, especially the scene in which a woman attempts to claim the body of a loved one who died from a then-unknown-but-contagious illness. The First Fallen could serve as a call for compassion and understanding from those entering the medical field.