Motel Destino

Futuro Beach

 

Director Karim Aïnouz

director on the set

MOTEL DESTINO                B                                                                                            Brazil  France  Germany  Great Britain  (115 mi)  2024  d: Karim Aïnouz

Returning to Brazil in the post-Bolsonaro era after stints in Germany, Great Britain, and Algeria, queer Brazilian-Algerian director Karim Aïnouz drew inspiration for this film from a tradition of Brazilian cinema, the pornographic comedy (Pornochanchada), a very popular genre in the 70’s that had a distinct focus on the female anatomy, a lurid distraction from the brutal tactics of the oppressive Brazilian military dictatorship, giving rise to iconic actress Sônia Braga, who was the epitome of Brazilian films during the 70’s.  With films like Bruno Barreto’s sexually explicit yet comically lighthearted Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands (Doña Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) (1976), or Arnaldo Jabor’s I LOVE YOU (Eu Ye Amo) (1981), there were also the extremely popular Carlos Diegues films XICA (1976) and Bye Bye Brazil (Bye Bye Brasil) (1980), all films that rejoice in a liberated spirit while displaying a healthy attitude towards nudity and sex.  Working as assistant director to Todd Haynes in New York and Walter Salles in Rio de Janeiro, Aïnouz has made films with a distinct and innovative vision that transcends formal boundaries, where his first feature MADAME SATÃ (2002) was a trailblazing portrayal of a real-life black queer female impersonator and prolific street fighter, described by Film Quarterly as “a classic of queer cinema…well ahead of its time,” which was followed by The Silver Cliff (O Abismo Prateado) (2011), Futuro Beach (Praia do Futuro) (2014), and 2019 Top Ten List #4 Invisible Life (A Vida Invisível), works that range from experimental queer cinema to complex character studies and poetic explorations of family origins.  A Brazilian tropical neo-noir premiering at Cannes that’s defiantly sexy, sweaty, and dripping with spontaneous energy, this film recreates space in an innovative way, as the vibrantly seductive, neon-colored cinematography by Hélène Louvart, who has shot some of the more visually distinctive works, is nothing less than inspired, shot on 16mm and Super 8mm, making the stunning visuals the strongest asset of the film, creating a subterranean, crime-drenched atmosphere that seems to exist in its own lurid world, allowing viewers to bathe in the brightness of the oversaturated colors and lighting.  The sleazy sex motel setting of the film is like a central character, where the suffocating intimacy of desire is a prominent theme, questioning whether the marginalized characters are driven by their own circumstance or controlled by a fate they can’t escape, perhaps a reminder of the days of repression when people were forced to take refuge in the shadows of secretive places like this.

Written by Aïnouz with Wislan Esmeraldo and Mauricio Zacharias during the presidency of right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro, this is set in Fortaleza, the site of Futuro Beach on the sunny ocean shores of Northeast Brazil, where hanging out at the beach is a foregone conclusion, as the blueness of the sea against the white sand always looks so inviting.  It’s there that we find beads of water and sweat glistening against the black skin of 21-year old Heraldo (Iago Xavier) and his older brother Jorge (Renan Capivara) frolicking in the waves, like little kids.  When Heraldo announces he wants to get out of town to look for work in São Paulo and start a new life, you might wonder why anyone would leave this idyllic paradise, but things are not what they seem, as the two brothers work for a crime boss Bambina (Fabiola Liper), who wants his debts paid before he leaves, so she orders them to pull off one last debt-collection job.  Seeking refuge in a local beach bar the night before, Heraldo finds himself charmed by a beautiful stranger (Isabela Catão), quickly making their way to a brightly-lit roadside sex motel, Motel Destino, that never closes and rents by the hour or even half-hour, only to discover he’s overslept (likely sedated) and been ripped off by the young woman, leaving him in a spot, scrambling to get to his brother, but he arrives too late, as Jorge was forced to carry off the job alone, leaving him shot and killed.  Having nowhere else to go, suddenly finding himself a fugitive needing to lay low for fear of retribution, he returns back to the Motel to hide out, curiously allowed entry by the owner’s wife Dayana (Nataly Rocha), who is intrigued to see him again after the desperate situation he found himself in earlier.  The volatile ex-cop owner Elias, (Fábio Assunção, a former soap opera heartthrob), finds work for him to do around the place, and the film essentially revolves around this single location, which is a seedy world of sex and pleasure, a sinner’s paradise, accompanied by huge amounts of alcohol consumption.  Heraldo proves himself a worthy handyman, easily fixing things that are broken, quickly gaining the confidence of Elias, with suggestions of homoeroticism.  One of the things that’s interesting is that the characters are dressed in little more than bathing suits for most of the film, implying comfort, ease, and relaxation, with plenty of nudity and sex, yet remains shrouded in moral ambiguity, where there’s also a relentless foreboding layer of danger that hovers over everything we see, with suspense building quietly, suggesting these seemingly disparate lives are somehow intertwined.

As if stuck in a state of inertia, where not much actually happens (viewers may drift off as well), a dangerous love triangle quickly escalates into an erotic thriller, yet this is mostly a lingering human relationships film that delves into the unsettling aspects of the characters, with Heraldo having a steamy affair with Dayana, who assumes the sultry Sônia Braga role, as we’re mostly confined to cramped quarters, long empty hallways or back rooms away from the prying eyes of Elias.  Perhaps it’s their situation of always living in the secrecy of isolation, where emotions are heightened, but a threatening danger is always hovering nearby, especially given the sexual voyeuristic effect of the Motel, with Elias frequently peering through the peepholes attached to each room, and the film’s abundant use of neon lights and surveillance footage, creating a saturated color palette, accompanied by the ambient sounds of moans and screams coming out of those rooms, along with an intentional use of outdoor animals who can also be seen fornicating.  The interior spaces of the Motel can be seen in quite literally a new light, where a sensory landscape blurs the boundaries between what’s real and imagined, as the film is primarily about depicting its characters’ insatiable desires, whether they be sexual or vengeful, with an electronic and techno-fused soundtrack composed by Amine Bouhafa and Benedikt Schiefer adding another layer of sensory overload.  Things quickly spill out of control when the oddly charismatic Elias celebrates his birthday with an alcohol-fused party sequence of the three of them together, but by then the frustrated Dayana has grown sick and tired of his violent and abusively domineering ways, pretending to placate his continually fluctuating moods by telling him what he wants to hear while secretly having eyes for Heraldo, both planning to escape together, where the dubious thought of killing Elias crosses their minds in an ode to Tay Garnett’s classic film noir The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), but this plays out differently, more like a surrealistic dreamscape, spilling into a fever dream of emotional chaos and dread, where only fate can free them, building to a heavy synth-infused, strobe-aligned, electronic pulse rave conclusion with flashing lights that blast over the end credits.  One of the director’s comments was that this was specifically designed for the Cannes Film Festival theater screening, “It’s such a conservative space with people dressed up.  I wanted [the end credits] to burn down the Lumière!  There’s a sense of seriousness that’s so important to break.”

Once Upon a Time Verônica (Era uma vez eu, Verônica)

ONCE UPON A TIME VERÔNICA (Era uma vez eu, Verônica)        C                    

Brazil  France  (91 mi)  2012  d:  Marcelo Gomes   

The problems inherent with this film are reflective of the current lackluster state of malaise in the Brazilian film industry overall which seemingly lags behind the quality of other major Latin American cinema cultures at the moment, where Mexico (Carlos Reygadas, Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, Francisco Vargas, Fernando Eimbcke, and Amat Escalante) and Argentina (Lisandro Alonso, Lucretia Martel, Fabián Bielinsky, Adrián Caetano, Carlos Sorín, Albertina Carri, Martín Rejtman, and Pablo Trapero) in particular lead the way, but even the smaller film industries of Chile, and perhaps even Cuba, Uruguay, and Peru are producing more innovative films than Brazil, where the variance in quality is rather sizeable, subject to horrendously bad movies featuring “Telenova” actors, others copying the latest aesthetic of indie style films, while billionaire producer Walter Salles wields considerable power and influence after the critical success of CITY OF GOD (2002) over a decade ago, but the films he has written, directed or produced in the past ten years have often just been bad films, where he tends to choose topical issues but the focus is on artificiality and surface qualities, often relying upon nude scenes, rarely getting under the surface into complex character development.  CINEMA, ASPIRINS AND VULTURES (2005), an earlier film by Marcelo Gomes premiered at the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes, but this film, despite a brave effort by lead actress Hermila Guedes as the title character Verônica, a psychologist working at a public hospital, is ridiculously simplistic and an insult to the mental health profession in its lackadaisical presentation.  Even the sitcom television comedy The Bob Newhart Show (1972 – 78) offered greater respect and in depth insight for patients showing signs of depression and various other psychological ailments than this film, even though a good part of it is realistically shot during treatment sessions. 

Opening and closing on a swirling montage of nude bathers at the beach, Verônica is seen as one of the party revelers, where the continual movement of bodies and camera are woven into an orgiastic frenzy of sexual freedom, becoming a dreamy image of personal liberation that may only be a fantasy, especially as the camera then moves indoors to a couple having sex, where the bodies exist in an impressionistic mosaic of nudity, but other than cliché’d verbal responses, it’s hard to find any real passion in the room.  Afterwards, as if sizing herself up in the mirror, Verônica speaks into a handheld tape recorder and offers detached, diary-like thoughts about her impassive state of mind, identifying herself in the third person, “Patient:  Verônica.  Had some great sex last night.  Or at least she thinks she did.”  This recurring motif describes the adolescent self-absorption of her thoughts, continually calling attention to herself, but also the lack of any real insight into her own character.  In a Grey’s Anatomy (2005 – present) moment, Verônica is seen celebrating with other members of her graduating class from medical school in Recife, where what’s immediately apparent is the difference between book knowledge and patient knowledge, as she’s thrust into the sprawling overcrowded population of patients waiting to be seen in a public hospital, where it’s hard to believe she’s actually “helping” anyone.  Nonetheless she walks past this ever expanding line of patients to get to her office each day, where a variety of ailments present themselves to her, but realistically she always feels like a fish out of water, as there’s little actual interaction with patients when all she does is sit there writing prescriptions all day.  Away from work, she spends the majority of her time with her elderly father (W.J. Solha), a retired banker with a love for listening to old Brazilian records, but whose declining health worries her, seen tenderly taking care of him even though his continual advice for his daughter is to head for the beach or go out with friends and live her own life instead of being stuck with him. 

The one constant throughout is Verônica resorting to sex as the only outlet for all her internal struggles, spending most of the time with her boyfriend Gustavo (João Miguel), but she continues to express self-doubts, offering vacuous comments like “I, patient Verônica, uncertain about life, like everybody else.”  She even seems to believe she has a heart of stone, as she freely has sex with others as well and has difficulty making emotional commitments.  You get the feeling that every aspect of her life is self-analyzed, that perhaps the only reason she became a psychiatrist was to analyze herself, as she remains indifferent to everyone else except her father, the one man she can depend on.  The dreary and downbeat tone at work and in her life feels monotonous and suffocating, growing even worse when she discovers her father is dying, but this is contrasted by street scenes of the two of them walking slowly through Recife recalling past memories while a blossoming vitality of life exists all around them.  When they’re forced to move to a new location, due to needed building repairs, it’s a rather overt metaphor for having to rebuild their own lives.  Real life is overly grim, where there’s simply nothing to lure the audience into this perpetual aloofness except the sensuousness of the music heard throughout, where in Verônica’s early onset midlife crisis she has thoughts of becoming a professional singer.  While this seems little more than a dream, it does give the director an excuse to film whatever passes through her head, resorting to multiple sex scenes as well as a nightclub singer singing one of those songs you can’t seem to get out of your head, that Verônica actually sings to one of her disgruntled patients, “It’s all standardized in our hearts/ Our way of loving doesn’t seem to be ours at all/ Forever moving love to a new address.”  This shifting focus of attention and inability to concentrate on anything except the sensuousness of the beach, sex, music, and dreams does reflect the Brazilian state of mind, as if stuck in a reverie, but in this film she’s imprisoned by it.    

Southwest (Sudoeste)

SOUTHWEST (Sudoeste)                   B-                     

Brazil  (128 mi)  2011  Super ‘Scope (3.66 Aspect Ratio)  d:  Eduardo Nunes

What starts out as a film with tremendous promise eventually dies a slow death of dullness and utter predictability by the end of the picture, as this is largely an exercise in visual stylization, shot by Mauro Pinheiro using Black and White film with a super Widescreen aspect ratio of 3.66, while ‘Scope is 2:35, but unfortunately a choice was made to shoot the movie on HD Video, so only the middle sliver of the screen is used, none of it in the sharp focus of 35 mm, while 30 to 40 % of the movie screen both on top and below are unused, which gives the feel of a movie that was simply projected wrong, and would be even less visible on a TV screen, probably unwatchable.  The director was present and he also reported the sound design was incorrect, as the stereo sound should move throughout the various sections of the theater and from front to back.  Granted, if the movie made use of an entire ‘Scope-sized movie screen, this might possess a more powerful effect, as the film is gorgeous to look at, but the real problem lies with the detached and uninvolving nature of the story itself, a combined effort written by the director and William Sarmiento, which near wordlessly follows one day in the life of a young girl Clarice who ages throughout the day, ending up near death from old age by evening.  Once the audience figures out what’s happening, as her character continually evolves to new actresses playing her part, which initially is so beautifully confusing, nothing that follows appears strange or unique, but just seems to predictably follow the storyline.  While there is a moody opening sequence, the cinematographer is obviously under the influence of Béla Tarr, who uses real film, by the way, but also uses extremely slow pans where the camera acts as an all observing eye, where nothing is ever explained, but sequences gather momentum as information is accumulated over time.  Not so in this film, where information detracts from the overall impact which is strongest in the beginning when the audience hasn’t a clue what’s going on. 

Supposedly ten years in the making due to lack of funding, as the film is too slow for commercial possibilities, the film is largely a fantasy realization but shown using a grim, ultra realistic look, shot in Brazil on actual isolated coastal locations, where ironically Brazil has no Southwest coast, all of which lends itself to magical realism.  But initially the dour mood that pervades the opening scenes is broken by the unexpected presence of a young girl, Clarice (Rachel Bonfante), who appears out of nowhere, but bears the same name as a previous character that is already dead and buried, where she could be a ghost or the secret appearance of her unborn child, also presumed dead, or simply a metaphor for life, which begins and ends all too quickly.  Bonfante is the best thing in the film, shot in the bright light of morning, as she barely utters a word but captures volumes of emotion on her face, where she always appears a bit puzzled, like a wandering spirit that is simply lost, but she innocently latches onto whoever feels like taking care of her and especially enjoys playing with another child, João (Victor Navega Motta), often sharing special secrets with him.  It was João’s curiosity that found Clarice in the first place, so she seems to have a special bond with him, which gets a bit peculiar when she ages, not realizing it herself, apparently, still acting childlike and playful.  But it turns out they share a special history that accounts for the peculiar opening sequence, but the only ones truly haunted by her presence appear to be the adults, who tend to avoid her, suggesting they are uncomfortable and in denial by what she represents.

As Clarice ages, the other young actresses never make that initial connection to match Bonfante, who truly dazzles onscreen, which creates a kind of disconnect with her character.  The film couldn’t be more detached and disorienting as it is, but when the characters become more ordinary, her storyline loses interest.  The youngest character delighted us with utter amazement, while the older characters simply lack her personality, where they appear less like an apparition or an unexplained oddity and more like a typical young girl.  Certainly what she undergoes is a bewildering transformation, but there’s little complexity about the experience that is shared with the audience, where instead she ages as is appropriate for the storyline rather than unexpectedly and with great surprise.  There’s an interesting festival pageant on a tiny scale in this poverty stricken village that produces a costumed character that can only be compared to a similar haunting presence of death in BLACK ORPHEUS (1959), where this outcome is equally appalling, leaving Clarice alone to fend for herself, where what’s particularly striking is just how isolated and alone she has become, where the pervasive mood swings to near horror.  There are subliminal images matching a haunting sound design that clearly indicate something is amiss, terrifying as in otherworldly, but the director neglects to follow up on this bit of unpleasantness and instead trudges forward with the inevitable that we knew was coming for the final two-thirds of the film.   Long, slow, and uninvolving, this will be infuriorating to some, very much in the feel of copycat Béla Tarr, but without the depth, stark imagery, acid humor, and modernist humanism on display. 

Note:  Kudos to Marilyn Ferdinand who has apparently written the first and only English language review found of this film at Ferdy on Films seen here:  CIFF 2011: Southwest (Sudoeste, 2011) - Ferdy on Films.