Toll

Conversion therapy...with a difference!

This is not the typical, middle-class, white boy forced by his bible-bashing parents to mend his filthy ways via a very expensive residential program...usually run by a homophobic ex-gay pastor...kind of story.

It certainly has some similarities...but, take out the wealth, the white boy and the b-bashing parents. Replace them with a black boy, money worries, a doting mother and a plus-size, 50+, bible-bashing nymphomaniac - she's dangerous!

This mother wants her son cured. She's got no money. But...she knows how to get some. Simple.

The son doesn't want to be cured. Her house, her rules. But...that's all about to change. Big time.

Carolina Markowicz deals with stark realities and problematic practicalities with neither overstatement nor fuss. Details appear to be vague, backstories embrace brevity and where there should be darkness...there is light!

The therapy sessions supply the lighter moments in the film - due to them being completely bizarre...plasticine genital molding classes! Sign me up!

Pragmatism is at the heart of Toll - if something has to be done, get it done. Rather than all the threads of the story coming together to form an all-encompassing blanket, they are cut, abruptly, leaving strands...of success, of failure.

But...success and failure are purely subjective. Did Tiquinho achieve his ambition? That's up to you to decide.

Trailer...