Maeve Jinkings in Toll (TIFF)

Carolina Markowicz, the writer/director of last year’s most noteworthy discovery at the Toronto International Film Festival, Charcoal, has followed up her feature debut with the droll, subdued Brazilian kitchen sink drama Toll, which similarly features a touch of crime. Her latest had its world premiere in Toronto, where Markowicz will be awarded the TIFF Emerging Talent Award, which is given to a recipient who reflects “the spirit of Torontonian Mary Pickford, the groundbreaking actor, producer, and co-founder of United Artists, whose impact continues today,” according to a festival press release.

The film’s homonymous title refers both to the workplace of thirtysomething Suellen (Maeve Jinkings), a money collector in a toll booth in the industrial city Cubatão, and to the cumulative effect of her stoney obstinacy. Unlike the tightly plotted, multi-layered comedic caper Charcoal, Markowicz’s new film is told mostly from the perspective of a hardheaded parent stuck in a fruitless pattern—in her job, in her love life, and in her taut relationship with her gay teenage son, Antonio (Kauan Alvarenga).

What Markowicz’s characters say and do are two completely different things. They are not so much hypocrites as pridefully stubborn. (As Suellen’s work confidant states, “marriage is too serious for us to spoil it with the truth.”) Suellen clings to her homophobic belief, ignoring other options in dealing with her son’s queerness.

The script tweaks a hoary concept that has been used by filmmakers since the silent era: a mother’s sacrifice. As Suellen says, “there’s nothing a mother won’t do for her son’s health.” In this particular case, she wants her 17-year-old son, who is a bit of a sullen cypher, to become straight, and certainly to stop making WhatsApp videos lip-syncing to Billie Holiday. Rather than nurture Antonio, Suellen admonishes him not to draw attention to himself.

Yet he is a dutiful son, though she blackmails him: She’ll give him money for English lessons if he stops making those videos. (He wants to perfect his English to lip-sync better to the likes of Dinah Washington.) She also urges him to attend a quackery gay conversion therapy course led by Pastor Isaac (Isac Graca), who with his long flowing locks and apple-shaped face could easily be in the cast of a Jesus Christ Superstar revival. Suellen must enroll Antonio now; in four months, he will turn 18 and become an emancipated adult. Her biggest challenge: How to come up with the hefty fee. She knows of a way to get ready cash, but it will involve breaking one of the Ten Commandments.

Markowicz doesn’t let details slide by. She builds atmosphere and character through small gestures and an accumulation of seemingly offhand, unguarded moments. Visually, this film has much more flair than her previous work. The toll booth sits along a mountainside freeway near oil refineries that, aglow at night, look eerily apocalyptic.

This is the latest addition to the growing number of Brazilian films that offer pungent perspectives on the country’s rising Evangelical movement. As in Anita da Rocha Silviera’s Medusa, the church sessions take on a satirical tone—who ever thought molding genitalia out of Play-Doh would turn people on? Despite the bizarreness of the conversion rituals, the underlying homophobia stings. Markowicz’s film also joins the company of movies that revolve around self-involved mothers, like Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter and Ordinary People’s Mary Tyler Moore, who are openly hostile toward their offspring.

Toll will next screen at the San Sebastian Film Festival. Look out for it at a fall festival (hopefully near you).