The title of the film “Vazante,” as translated by subtitles, refers to a “surge,” but more literally means the very opposite — an ebb, or receding, of the tide. Still, as suggested by the opening scene, in which an unidentified woman is shown dying in childbirth, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Such cyclical polarities — of life and death, dependence and autonomy, rising and falling — inform and enrich this film, directed by Daniela Thomas, the longtime collaborator of Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. Every frame of its starkly gorgeous black-and-white cinematography — which celebrates the beauty of barren mud as much as the potential of a 12-year-old girl — hints at an inherent contradiction visually, or in the narrative or in the film’s larger themes.
Set in colonial Brazil in 1821, on the estate of a middle-aged Portuguese cattle rancher and slave trader named Antonio (Adriano Carvalho), the story takes its sweet time laying out the premise.
The cinematic foot-dragging, which focuses as much on brooding close-ups as plot development, may initially frustrate viewers, even though the climax, which comes at the last possible moment, is an emotionally devastating corker.
It eventually becomes clear that it is Antonio’s wife who has died, and is replaced by her niece, Beatriz (Luana Nastas), a preteen who has not quite reached childbearing age. While he waits for his bride to reach puberty, Antonio satisfies himself sexually with a slave (Jai Baptista), whose adolescent son (Vinicius Dos Anjos) also finds himself drawn to his master’s new wife, especially during Antonio’s long absences to conduct business.
This is a recipe neither for a happy marriage nor a happy ending, but Thomas keeps things at a simmer for the longest time, forestalling the story’s ultimate boil-over until the final minute or so of the tale.
“Vazante” meanwhile concerns itself with other clashes — between slave and master, slave and slave (some of whom come from different African countries and cannot communicate with one another); and between one notably self-confident free black man, Jeremias (Fabrício Boliveira), and the more subservient human chattel over whom he is hired to work.
Women, too, are treated like property in this gathering storm of a yarn, whose subject matter — racism and sexism — is powerfully timely, despite the period setting of the film. The mining of diamonds, which used to be the main local industry, has dried up, and the soil seems inhospitable to farming, despite Jeremias’ insistence that it can be made to yield crops. “Fire stirs up the womb of the Earth,” he says, after clearing a field by burning it to the ground.
If that sounds like both a metaphor for the film’s contradictory themes and a warning about the scorched-earth conflagration still to come, it is. “Vazante’s” explosive denouement — both shockingly sudden and implicitly foretold — suggests that the old ways cannot last, but that they won’t be given up without an ugly fight.

‘Vazante’

3 stars
Unrated (contains violence, sex, nudity and mature thematic material)
Cast: Adriano Carvalho, Luana Nastas, Fabrício Boliveira, Vinicius Dos Anjos, Jai Baptista
Director: Daniela Thomas
Running time: 1 hour,  56 minutes