After reading an intertitle disclaimer that shows before The Pink Cloud, it’s only fair to be fair. The disclaimer, by the way, reads that director and writer Iuli Gerbase wrote the film in 2017. She then completed it during 2019. She probably aimed for a 2020 release that didn’t happen because, well, everything. It is having a festival run this year, and the everything I’m gesturing to relates to the film. A lot. Its basic premise is that a poisonous cloud, or several, has descended onto major population areas like New Jersey and a few Brazilian cities forcing people to stay home.

The disclaimer feels like an exemption ticket in case they get things wrong, and they do, but at least they get things right. Protagonist Giovana (Renata de Lelis) Facetimes with her sister Julia (Helena Becker). This is basically most bourgeois peoples’ interactions during this recent pandemic. Family is an important aspect in films that do or don’t have pandemics as part of the premise. And that’s true here, as Giovana, during a day the characters didn’t know is day 1, sleeps over with a guy she met at a bar.

That guy is Yago (Eduardo Mendonca), her now reluctant housemate until the cloud disappears, and Pink Cloud then is about the cycle where both find love, break up, and reunite, and whether they break that cycle or not. I get that Gerbase probably chose a smaller approach to make this relatable, but why is this the most pressing thing in a film about a deadly cloud? Giovana’s Facetime friend Sara (Kaya Rodrigues) calls that flaw out, asking why no one’s investigating the cloud. They can use the same drones that they use to build the tubes sending food to people. That’s just one of this film’s many problems.

Catch The Pink Cloud here.