Gabriel Martins’s touching drama Mars One shows the unique challenges each member of a tight-knit family faces in the aftermath of the 2018’s Brazil presidential election when a far-right candidate won the seat. Deivinho (Cícero Lucas) is a brainy kid with big dreams of becoming an astrophysicist while his dad, Wellington (Carlos Francisco) wants him to become a football player. The patriarch is a caretaker at a luxury apartment block and one of the residents happens to be Juan Pablo Sorin (appearing as himself), a famous Brazilian football player who may help the boy in his career. His mom, Tércia (Rejane Faria) starts experiencing insomnia and anxiety after being caught up in a terrible TV prank where they pretended to blow up a diner. The boy’s sister, Eunice (Camilla Damião) loves her family, but is struggling with telling her parents about her sexuality and that she wants to move in with her girlfriend, Joanna (Ana Hilário).
Mars One ending explained
By the third act, it seems Wellington’s dream to see his son become a professional football player might come true after Juan Pablo Sorin keeps his word and arranges for Deivinho to attend a try-out. Sadly the date of the try-out coincides with the date Eunice and Joanna were going to take the boy to a science fair. A disappointed Deivinho injures himself on purpose by riding his bike down a steep hill.
Convinced she’s somehow cursed with bad luck, Tércia decides to take a weekend trip so she doesn’t hinder her family’s chance at success. As she’s buying the cheapest bus ticket to “anywhere”, she sees the man from the television prank show trying to pull another dumb joke in the bus terminal. The woman decides to confront him and in a cathartic fit of rage breaks one of the expensive cameras. Before she could go back to purchase the coach ticket, she was called back home where Eunice and her girlfriend were already tending to an injured Deivinho.
For poor Wellington, things get very bad, very quickly. After making the mistake of trusting his coworker with their boss’s apartment key while she was on holiday, he learns that his colleague robbed the place. The building manager holds Wellington responsible for the theft and fires him. When he arrives home and sees his son’s injury will stop him from attending the tryouts, the man has a nervous breakdown and falls off the wagon for the first time in four years.
The next day, a hungover Wellington feels horrible for breaking his sobriety. However, his wife learns from the news the bus she was supposed to take the previous day got in a horrific accident with no survivors. Seeing the TV prankster in the station before buying a ticket and boarding what would have been certain death was pure luck.
In the evening, Tércia attends an AA meeting with her husband who breaks down when he sees Eunice also at the meeting to show her support. The father and daughter have a heart-to-heart when she finally tells him that Joanna is not just a roommate, but her girlfriend, which he seems to accept. Ending on a hopeful note, the film shows the family spending some quality time together after they all get to see Mars on the telescope Deivinho had built from scratch. They don’t know what the future might hold, or if the young boy will ever achieve his dream of traveling to another planet, but they have each other. And sometimes, that’s enough.
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