A Wake (2019) is a film that deals with death, more fala, sobretudo, daquilo que ficou em suspense em vida: truths not told, affections not lived, identities hidden by means or shame. The story unfolds during the wake of a young theater actor, Noel, who died unexpectedly. His friends and family gather to pay homage, but the climate is less peaceful and more tense — because Noel, even absent, still occupies all the spaces with his silent presence. And, mainly, as the secrets that he left behind.
Among those who appear at the wake are theater colleagues, an ex-love, distant relatives and a youth companion with whom Noel divides more than dinners in the box. In a few years, what should have been a quiet farewell turns into an emotional confrontation — like the past, like magic, like truth. Everyone seems to carry some guilt or resentment in relation to Noel, as if the death of the tivesse interrupted something unfinished. It is this friction between memory and omission that makes A Wake fraught with emotional tension.
The giving center is not repressed love, that which never has space to fully exist. Two characters clearly have an intimate relationship with Noel, but the link was never openly assumed — not because of them, not because we are close to them. Now, when he dies, he is forced to face what he has lost: not only the people he loved, but the chance to live that love without masks. It is a double mourning — a physical death and a symbolic death of something that can never blossom.
The film works in a subtle, more intense way, the themes of internalized homophobia, emotional silencing and the weight of appearances. There is something cruel in the way the characters avoid saying what they really feel — like the environment is permeated with collective shame. The theater, which was the stage of Noel’s life, becomes a metaphor for what everyone there will represent: social dads, emotional masks, dinners staged to hide truths. And death, however tragic, seems to be the only moment in which the truth comes true.
What moves you in A Wake is not explicit mourning, but the silences between the words, the diverting smells, the restrained gestures. It is a story about something that was never told in life, and that creeps into the corridors of absence. There are no big speeches and no cathartic reconciliations — just little streaks, where they are hinted at, with delicadeza, or repentance, and love not lived. These are those gusts that the film breathes.
No fim, A Wake tells us that death does not turn off or that it was not resolved — it barely widens. The real weight of absence is in the words that we do not have the courage to say. Loving, when possible, is always urgent. Because after all… we only have ghosts left.
