Julie Bezerra Madsen’s movie “God, Please Ship A Whale” is a portrait of mourning. It captures when mourning has been deferred, and the emotional churn that comes with an absence of closure takes over. By means of this movie, she is grappling with the lack of her mom, who handed away six years earlier whereas visiting her sister, Ursula, in Brazil. The sisters have had severely totally different relationships with their mom. Ursula incessantly clashed together with her mom, whereas Julie had a extra temperate one. Nevertheless, Julie insists later to her father she might barely speak to her mom about something vital, which she simply brushed away. It was principally about bingo and boyfriends, she muses.

The three’s method of grieving is particular person and totally different. Julie’s father reminds her that his grief doesn’t have the same depth that she has of a kid who has misplaced her mom. In spite of everything, he had already been lengthy separated from their mom. Nevertheless, Julie is determined and agency to convey each her sister and father alongside the identical traces. She asserts the restorative significance of collective grieving. With them, she wishes to attempt to do issues she needs she had carried out together with her mom. Perhaps it might supply a type of solace. She suggests a ceremony they might have. Her enchantment of sharing grief is insistent as she struggles to reconnect together with her sister.

They don’t reject her outright however register their discomfort and hesitation.  The three have had deeply various recollections and experiences of being round her, whose absence has had a profound impact on their lives. Julie takes us on a tour via her household historical past, albeit not in nice element, a choice that works to arguably differing ends. Her sister, who was six years older than her, by no means bought to know her personal father, however the brand new man, whom her mom began going out with once they moved from Brazil to Denmark, took to her as if she have been his personal baby. He shortly earned the precise by which she regarded him as her personal father, her typically being extra snug and simpler round him than her mom.

Though the connection between the 2 ladies’ mom and their father ultimately broke up, his concern and affection for his daughters remained as unshakable as ever. Ursula, who later concedes with amusement that she wasn’t a simple baby, yearned for Brazil a lot in order that she selected to construct her life in it as a substitute of Denmark, the place she’d in any other case have quite a lot of safety within the reassuring presence of her household.

Her resolution to go for such a life, the place she offered jewellery on the streets together with her boyfriend and by some means scraped by a dwelling, by no means sat proper together with her mom. Ursula fiercely values her independence and ensures nobody can fairly push her into doing issues in opposition to her will. She is immune to any kind of management, defying the expectations of her mother and father, who want her stability whereas confronting a realization that she isn’t having it if it goes in opposition to the oft-reckless approach she chooses to guide her life.

After her mom’s dying, the sisters drifted aside. Julie says her return to Brazil together with her father and re-establishing a deep bond with Ursula is an “try and take motion.” It’s a technique of combating grief. With Ursula, she can’t fairly convey herself to debate issues regarding their mom as actually and brazenly as she needs to. Whereas Ursula appears extra collected, Julie’s bereavement brims with uncooked vulnerability. The previous has had a largely turbulent relationship together with her mom, not often seeing eye to eye on numerous points. At any time when her mom came visiting her in Brazil, the 2 would spend more often than not combating. Fortuitously, on her final go to earlier than her dying, issues have been extra cordial. A minimum of they bought to share just a few completely happy moments collectively.

Julie didn’t get to bid farewell to her mom correctly. It is just on this go to to her sister that, after a few years, she is making an attempt to have unresolved, long-due conversations. There’s a pretty second the place the 2 simply snigger their hearts out in a cathartic match after having many intense conversations. “God, Please Ship A Whale” shines with tender honesty in such moments the place the three individuals naked their souls to one another.  Although the obtrusively abrupt cuts shortly and inelegantly tempo via a dialog to disclose the bruising factors, Julie fills the movie with a lot candor and emotional reality any such niggling technical points might be forgiven.

God, Please Ship A Whale premiered at CPH: DOX Competition 2024.

God, Please Ship A Whale (2024) Film Hyperlink: MUBI