Toll
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Warning: The following review contains spoilers for Toll, a film that has just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
What can a toll booth operator do in their daily protocols? Administer who can pass through from one side to the other, be they countries divided by a border, or the inside and outside of a property. No matter what kind of toll you are looking at or where it is placed, there is a certain level of authoritative command that can be held at these positions. What if the operator is a mother of a gay son who doesn’t accept his identity? Such is the subject matter of Toll: the latest film by Brazilian filmmaker Carolina Markowicz premiering at the 2023 iteration of the Toronto International Film Festival (where Markowicz is also receiving the Emerging Talent Award). Of course, the title Toll is just the English language version (Pedágio being the official Portuguese title) and I’m not sure if the Portuguese term for “toll” has the same definitions as it does in English, but English-speaking audiences benefit from another angle that the title possesses: the toll of a mother’s actions that everyone feels around her (and the toll that citizens of a bigoted region, community, or era have to endure).
Markowicz’s film is full of double meanings and interpretations because it is driven by the very concept of double standards and hypocrisies. Suellen is the protagonist toll booth operator whose son, Tiquinho, is openly gay and has gone viral on social media. His videos have circled back around to Suellen’s workplace and she is embarrassed by the scorn she notices from her peers. She demands that Tiquinho stop posting these kinds of videos or else she will stop taking care of him, be it through the refusal to feed him or the cutting of the internet. Eventually, she goes the extra mile once a cohort recommends a cultish gay conversion program to her. She will do whatever it takes for Tiquinho to partake in this program, including cutting deals with thieves that she meets at her booth to afford the workshop. Not once does Toll ever frame this as a good idea as Markowicz portrays Tiquinho as an everyday person who is just living his life freely, and the gay conversion program is insane to the point of being satirical (and yet the film is not hyperbolic about these programs one bit, and that’s the unfortunate truth). You can feel Suellen’s homophobia from across the room, but she believes that she is acting motherly and that is where Toll becomes a fascinating watch; is it possible that there is love when one is acting so vehemently out of hate?
Toll is a no-nonsense look at bigotry and the extent people will go to when they feel they are doing the right thing for a loved one, even if they are fueled by hate.
One great example of how Toll leaves you in the grey area to think for yourself is with a peculiar subplot involving Suellen’s coworker and her lover and how they act (without spoiling too much). Can we view this relationship as a desecration of love given how they act out in the open? Can we value their freedom to love as openly as they choose? Is Suellen in the wrong for barging in on the act of love in the same way that she is not to impose her views on her son? Or is Suellen being wronged here when shamed because all she was doing was her job (or so she felt)? In one scene of a subplot that just seems to be plopped in Toll, we have a whole series of questions about what we are seeing, and that’s what I think Markowicz wants. No matter what your takeaway from this subplot is, you will wind up with a similar-enough conclusion: there’s a juxtaposition here that heightens how out of her element Suellen is with what she is doing to her son, and the discrimination people like Tiquinho have to deal with while others can do as they wish.
As Toll continues, one malicious action leads to another and what began as an ill-advised mother’s crusade to protect her son — who did not need any saving — has turned into a hostile, deadly explosion at the end of a terrible Rube Goldberg machine of toxic parenting. While Toll doesn’t opt for strictly tense filmmaking (it has some airiness to it that allows many scenes the opportunity to breathe), it does gather anxious momentum as it ventures forth to the point that its climax will destroy your nerves. What is special about Toll’s conclusion is how it prioritizes the celebration of the maligned over the consequences of the hateful in invidious circumstances. How does it look when a son can love his mother after all she has done to him when this same mother refuses to accept her son for who he is?
Such is the crossing of thresholds found in Toll, Carolina Markowicz’s most recent examination of the complexities of the human experience and the hideousness of intolerance. When a mother wants to change a child so much that she puts herself and many others in danger, that’s quite a telling situation. Can these actions really be out of love or care at this point? Toll concludes with what is ultimately unconditional love found in an extremely bittersweet (more bitter, actually) sequence where a mother and child have no choice but to look at each other for who they truly are when fully exposed. While Toll was originally set to be Markowicz’s debut (Charcoal got released first last year during Toll’s production delays), this is a powerful follow-up that I feel will place the up-and-coming artist on the map. With all eyes on her and this film during TIFF 2023, many will find a powerful representation of societal injustice and the relentlessness of despise in an already challenging global society. In a film this bleak, there is a hint of hope and love that acts as a fitting sendoff once viewers finish Toll: hate will always be dealt its karma, but true love — in all its many shapes and forms — cannot be destroyed. That love can also be for one’s self: a topic many of us need to hear nowadays in the age of perpetual self-loathing. Film festivals have their big releases that many anticipate, but the biggest rewards come from the lesser-known films that carry the same weight of importance. Toll will wind up being a TIFF winner for many, I am sure: it may not have been on the itineraries of many before, but it will populate many post-festival lists.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.