Airplane Mode (2020)

Airplane Mode arrives from Brazil by way of Netflix, a 2020 comedy in which a fashion student named Ana abandons her studies to become a digital influencer, crashes her car mid-phone-call, and is shipped to her grandfather's farm for a digital detox imposed by her parents. The film treats this premise with the sincerity of a public service announcement that has learned to smile. Grandpa Germano does not understand hashtags. Ana does not understand chickens. Romance blooms with a young man named João, who has access to a convenience store and, eventually, to her heart.

For a picture so preoccupied with the moral hazards of the phone, the sermonizing stays remarkably light. The digital detox carries a message about presence and authenticity, but the film delivers it through plot mechanics, not speeches, and the effect lands closer to a gentle nudge than a lecture. There is a mild hostility toward corporate fashion, embodied in the boss Carola, who steals Ana's designs and ends up arrested, which offers a soft anti-corporate flavor without ever gesturing at the economic system that produced her. The protagonist's journey toward a design career reads as ordinary coming-of-age material. Nothing about it announces a thesis.

The cast is Brazilian and naturally diverse, with Black and brown performers in supporting roles, though the film never pauses to make anything of it. Race goes unmentioned. So do queerness, body image, neurodivergence, and history itself, the last for the sensible reason that this is a contemporary story about a girl and a farm. We are left with a modest artifact: pleasant, formulaic, and culturally quiet. It is the cinematic equivalent of a phone on airplane mode. No bars, no signal, no agenda.