In Bionic (Netflix), the Brazil of an imagined near future is full of elite prosthesis athletes. A tech company’s brain-fluent software and custom, solid-fiber-crafted artificial limbs have created a new level of available human power, and while that’s exciting in many ways, it’s very dangerous in lots of others, and two sisters, Olympic-level long jumpers Maria (Jessica Córes, Invisible City ) and Gabi (Gabz, Summer Heat ), find themselves on both sides of what the new prosthetic tech can do. Bionic, directed and co-written by Afonso Poyart ( 2 Coelhos , Solace ), also stars Bruno Gaggliasso and Christian Malheiros.
The Gist: It is 2035. While Maria watches from the sidelines, Gabi’s nearly fifty-foot jump (!) at the Pan-American Bionic Games becomes a new world record. Their mother was an Olympic long jumper before them, and the sisters both trained with her as kids.
But she died when they were young, their father Ricardo (Nill Marcondes) saw to Gabi, an amputee, being outfitted with a brain-integrated Solid Limbs prosthetic leg, and now Maria watches her sister enjoy bionic A-lister athlete glory while she runs the old fashioned way at a dilapidated hippodrome. “I feel at home here,” she tells her youngest brother Gus (Malheiros) when he stops by. “I think it represents the current state of regular athletes: abandoned.
” Gus brings trouble in the form of low-level criminal Heitor (Gaggliasso), and Maria is soon involved with this roguishly-haircutted guy, .
