Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter (Gustavo Vinagre, 2022) (Patreon)

One of the few remaining vestiges of the old Movie Nerd Discussion Group I used to belong to -- a Yahoo! Group, so yeah, do the math -- is a private site called Crix Pix, where about 20 to 25 of us still log general ratings for new releases, using a format adapted from old-school Variety. We have five categories: PRO, pro, mixed, con, and CON. Hardly a precision tool, but it does offer a handy at-a-glance impression of which films are gaining momentum among our small cadre. (You can see the current favorites here, if you're so inclined.)

I mention this here because, if ever there were a film that demands a resolute "mixed" rating, it's Gustavo Vinagre's Brazilian tongue-twister. (The original title, Três Tigres Tristes, is, um, tidier than the English version, although it is the same as a 1968 Raúl Ruiz film. Confusion reigns.) A film of dazzling highs and befuddling lows, T6 has the wandering, aleatory vibe of such works as Shu Lea Cheang's Fresh Kills, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli's So Pretty, and pretty much anything by Filipino loose cannon Khavn. A film about hanging out, or trying to, as the latest strain of a Covidesque virus sweeps São Paolo, T6 genuinely feels as though Vinagre is making it up as he goes along. This results in a bracing sense of invention, an atmosphere suggesting that anything could happen.

T6 focuses on two housemates, Pedro (Pedro Ribeiro), a cam model and part-time sex worker, and Isabella (Isabella Pereira), who is studying medical administration. The film's main threesome is filled out by Pedro's nephew Jonata (Jonata Vieira). (A brief discussion of family marriages, divorces, and late conception explains away the fact that Uncle Pedro and Nephew Jonata are about the same age.) Vinagre is turning his attention to a queer demimonde that is struggling to survive at least two disasters (Covid and Bolsonaro), and T6 is one of the first films I've seen to explicitly compare the pandemic with the AIDS crisis, in terms of impact, access, and vulnerability. It is simply a pleasure to follow these three young people around, seeing the world as they see it.

Early on, we learn that the newest strain, the "golden phase," causes permanent amnesia. We see a few people experience short-term memory loss, but this conceit doesn't become as pivotal as it seems like it could, or at least not in the manner one might expect. As we meet queer elders, like Pedro's homebound client Omar (Everaldo Pontes), or neo-cabaret singer Mirta (Cida Moreira), it becomes evident that forgetting is just a basic part of being alive. As part of the human condition, we must make our peace with it, which may be the case of Covid itself.

This widespread amnesia becomes a kind of Tarkovskian "Zone," wherein time no longer exists as such, and there is easy commingling between the living and the dead. At its most poignant moments, T6 embodies the concept of "queer time," as formulated by Jack Halberstam and others. Without exactly saying so, Vinagre suggests that the pandemic could result in a generalized queering of everyday life, a return of the repressed trauma of AIDS that spares no one, but offers radical possibilities for anyone and everyone.

This is a tricky concept to articulate, since it could be misconstrued as a nihilistic embrasure of death, and that's clearly not what Vinagre has in mind. But that need for intellectual precision makes T6's muddy, scattershot approach all the more frustrating. The film's penultimate scene is a bizarre (and admittedly original) orgy among the living, the dead, and various inanimate objects, whose existence across time mocks the impermanence of our flesh. (It seemed to touch upon the "new materialist" criticism of folks like Jasbir Puar, Kathleen Stewart, and Manuel de Landa.) But there's also a vague impression that death as such does not matter in this new regime, and that runs the risk of trivializing the very real (and material) trauma Covid has wrought. 

Nevertheless, T6 ought to be seen, both despite and because of its refusal to assume an identifiable shape. To paraphrase Lévi-Strauss, this is a good film to think with.