Ele (Odilon Esteves) is a man unmoored in life in the distant future. Each day he boards some sort of space flight, the routine a kind of numbing influence on his life. He wanders across a desert where he meets an old man (Chico Diaz) who desire to spray paint the sand blue. Ele does not find what he is looking for. Ele drifts through parties looking for a connection but unable to reach out to others. That is, until he meets the beautiful Alma (Maria Luísa Mendonça) who he comes to feel may be his soulmate. Will Ele find purpose while adrift in an indistinct and unfeeling world?

Deserto Azul a.k.a. Blue Desert is a hard film to pin down. It posits a future in which memory and ambition are dead and humanity seems to exist only to exist. Ele keeps having strange dreams that lead him on a metaphysical quest in search of greater meaning. The film has a repetition to it that is intended to drive home how aimless Ele’s existence is. As a meta commentary on the construction of a film as state of mind, this Brazilian flick offers an interesting manifestation of how the subconscious struggles for meaning, but as a film watching experience, it becomes tedious. It’s easy to see why Ele wants to break free of this cycle. It also makes complete sense that this film includes abstract excerpts from Yoko Ono’s book Grapefruit as it seems to channel Ono’s similarly surrealist art-as-life sensibilities. While the narrative may prove too inscrutable to all but the most artistically inclined individuals, where the film truly shines is in the fascinating and bold set and production design, which was put together by several visual artists at the behest of direct Eder Santos. They essentially treated the film set as their own personal art studio and created all manner of visions of new age futurism to capture the imagination.

I have mentioned it before, but it is unfortunate that IndiePix only gives its films a DVD release at best because Blue Desert shines in the visual department. The striking images are presented in a decent but predictably soft and fuzzy 480p transfer. The sound is presented in Portuguese in a 2.0 surround sound stereo track with English subtitles and comes across nice and clean with no obvious distortion. The film is actually very light on aural components in general, so this isn’t a track that will attract attention regardless. The disc includes no meaningful extras at all.

I wish IndiePix would consider releasing its more visually engaging films on blu-ray. Blue Desert’s post-modern art design sets and crisp cinematography I feel are enticing to those who are drawn to a visually stark film despite the lack of coherent narrative. If marketed correctly, this could prove to gather a cult audience that can appreciate its detached eccentricities amid its striking imagery.