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.”

Frida

Frida's father

 

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

Detroit Institute of Art

Man at the Crossroads

Frida with Leon Trotsky, 1937

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera

Frida with André Breton

Director/editor Carla Gutiérrez

Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero

Frida Kahlo House, Mexico City

Diego Rivera portrait of Frida Kahlo, 1939

FRIDA                        B                                                                                                           USA  (87 mi)  2024  d: Carla Gutiérrez

I am not afraid of death.  Even so, I must face the bitter fact that having many lives would still not be enough for me to paint everything I want.                                                                         —Frida Kahlo

An experimental documentary on Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, using cinema to reinterpret her paintings through new forms and juxtapositions, employing montage and visual intervention to blur the line between Frida’s inner world and her painted self-portraits, using considerable archival footage that only begins to describe the aesthetic.  What’s surprising about this documentary is how the narration is taken from Frida’s own personal writings in journals, letters, essays, and interviews, told through her own words for the very first time, read in the first-person by Mexican actress Fernanda Echevarría del Rivero, and then realized mostly using a surrealistic style of animation, which is not something you see in documentaries, and while it’s unconventional, it doesn’t exactly work either, but it is a novel approach.  Curiously, Frida Kahlo is probably more popular today than when she was alive, heavily commercialized like living legend Ché Guevara, yet what she’s most remembered for is not her art, or politics, but what she represents, her fiery attitude, her courage and fearlessness, her refusal to be compromised by money or power, becoming a true force for liberation.  Overshadowing her radical politics, she’s someone who believed in herself when no one else did, where she lived her life as a true and authentic artist who was openly bisexual, as her outlook on life was reflected in her paintings, which revealed a flood of color and emotions.  Peruvian-American Gutiérrez received a master’s degree in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University, and has been a creative advisor for the Sundance Edit Lab.  Drawing on her extensive experience as an editor, the director and editor premiered her first feature film at the Sundance Festival of 2024 where it won the prestigious Jonathan Oppenheim Award for Best Editing.  There are no known recordings of Frida Kahlo’s voice, so the filmmaker uses her paintings as a guide, breathing new life into her art as she reshapes them through brand new digitalized animation sequences created by Sofía Inés Cázares and Renata Galindo, adding her own artistic touches, like bits of colorization to monochrome archival footage, which may go a bit too far, yet it firmly anchors the film within the Mexican artistic tradition to which Frida was so deeply committed.  In meticulously executed paintings, Frida portrayed herself again and again, “I paint myself because I am what I know best,” simultaneously exploring, questioning, and staging her self and identity, carefully crafting a flamboyant Mexican persona, wearing brightly colored, traditional Tehuana dresses and pre-Columbian jewelry in a performative display of her identity.  The captivating acoustic music with attention to folk roots comes from Mexican musician and composer Victor Hernández Stumpfhauser, seen here working with his wife in the studio, "Casa" | FRIDA | Víctor Hernández Stumpfhauser  YouTube (1:25).   

There have been more than a dozen films made about the life of Frida Kahlo, yet despite this unusually immersive take into her subjective mindset, this film doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of an artist with such a complex legacy.  Mostly told in chronological order, Frida’s early life reflects the influence of her German émigré father, a professional photographer who allowed his daughter to help out in his studio, where she learned how to use and maintain a camera, while also developing a sharp artistic eye by helping him retouch and color photographs.  However, the fact that he was an atheist in a strongly Catholic country had a profound effect on his daughter, as it taught her to stand up for her own beliefs, even if they are unpopular.  Because her mother was an indigenous mestiza Mexican woman (Spanish and Purépecha), Frida identified strongly as mestiza and incorporated indigenous traditions and themes into her artistic identity.  Frida was a sickly child who contracted polio at the age of six, which caused her to be bedridden for nine months, leaving her with one leg shorter than the other and a noticeable limp afterwards.  Encouraged by her father into sports and more physical activities to help with her recovery, Frida suffered the most catastrophic event of her lifetime when a bus she was riding on collided with a streetcar, causing it to overturn, leaving her impaled by a steel handrail which punctured her hip, causing fractures in her spine and pelvis, which created lasting damage to her spine, along with eleven fractures in her right leg, spending more than a year in bed, leaving her with a tremendous amount of chronic pain that lasted her entire life, undergoing more than 30 operations in her lifetime.  Due to her spinal problems, she wore 28 separate supportive corsets, varying from steel and leather to plaster.  It was during her long bedridden recovery at home that she discovered painting, using it as a catharsis for the trauma she suffered, acknowledging “I paint because I need to,” transforming her own lived experience into a visual language of loss and painful artistic discovery, perhaps most similar to the magical realism of Henri Rousseau, a French post-impressionist painter in the naïve or folk primitive style.  If anyone ever transcended human suffering into creative art it would be Frida Kahlo, who epitomizes that triumphant spirit to overcome challenges.  A child of the Zapata Mexican Revolution when a Mexican workers revolt overthrew the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship in 1911, Frida was a lifelong Marxist advocating for workers’ rights, claiming “I feel the pain of the oppressed.  I feel the need to fight for them.  That’s why, as soon as they allowed me to walk after the accident, I joined the Communist Party.”

In her early teens, Frida was the only woman member of a social group called Las Cachuchas, subverting the rigid dress code of the period, where she dressed in a decidedly masculine style.  Frida first met famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera when he was painting a giant wall-sized mural at her high school, reconnecting again six years later when she wanted an honest opinion about her art, which was mostly a series of self-portraits.  Rivera was enthusiastic about what he saw, encouraging her to continue, inspired by the originality and personal aspect of her work, indicating “Her canvases revealed an unusual expressive energy,” while she was enamored with his artistry as well, entering into a relationship, though he was twenty years older, both sharing a Marxist vision for a better society, quickly getting married, despite his reputation as a serial womanizer.  Both seemed willing to put up with noticeable flaws in the other, but together they were a unifying force, each in radically different ways, making a collective statement about the transformative power of art.  Together they visited New York City, as Rivera was having an exhibition at MOMA, and later moved to Detroit for Rivera’s commission of twenty seven panels on the four walls of a massive courtyard inside the Detroit Institute of Arts, with a local Detroit newspaper headline indicating "Wife of the Master Mural Painter Gleefully Dabbles in Works of Art...”  Frida grew tired of the blatant moral hypocrisy she discovered in America, where luxurious wealth was thrown in people’s faces by the sneering wealth and extravagant gowns and costumes people wore, while at the same time displaying a haughty, derogatory attitude towards the workers who built the country, undermining them at every turn.  Frida yearned to return to a simpler life in Mexico, but Rivera kept getting new commissions, leading him to San Francisco and then back to New York, where Nelson Rockefeller commissioned a mural entitled Man at the Crossroads inside the RCA Building at the Rockefeller Center, only to have it destroyed one morning when Rockefeller learned it included a special tribute to Lenin, which led to the cancellation of other commissions.  Returning back to Mexico, Rivera was instrumental in helping to obtain asylum for Leon Trotsky when no other countries were interested, allowing him to live with them, with the ever-curious Frida having an affair with him, even though he was accompanied by his wife.   While that may seem scandalous today, it reflected her unashamed pursuit of freedom, which literally consumed every moment of her waking life, Reclamation | Frida | Prime Video YouTube (1:45).  After a devastating miscarriage, she became obsessed with the whole idea of starting over, seeing things anew, discovering her own voice and indomitable passions, reflecting the anguish and vulnerability of living with chronic pain.

While enlisting the help of art historian Hayden Herrera, the preeminent Frida Kahlo scholar who wrote the definitive 1983 book Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, the artist remains an enigma, where there’s so much more than is presented here, never really delving into what makes her so vitally different, despite the personalized diary entries.  There is a running commentary of Frida’s internal thoughts throughout this movie, accompanied by an ever-changing series of paintings, given new life by surrealistic animated artwork that literally makes it come alive, where she was embraced by the Surrealist movement, with theorist and co-founder André Breton visiting her in Mexico championing her work, captivated by the visceral, deeply personal nature of her art, arranging exhibitions for her in New York and subsequently in Paris.  But like New York, she found the French art scene pretentious and hypocritical, describing Breton’s circle of Surrealists as “artistic bitches,” claiming they are “so damned intellectual…They sit for hours in the ‘cafés’ warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about ‘culture,’ ‘art,’ revolution,’ and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsense, and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true… Shit and only shit is what they are,” finally reaching a conclusion, “I hate Surrealism.  It’s a decadent manifestation of bourgeois art”  “They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn’t.  I never painted dreams.  I painted my own reality.”  On a personal level, however, Frida developed a deep connection with Breton’s wife, the artist Jacqueline Lamba, blossoming into a romantic affair, coming at a time when her marriage was on the rocks, as Rivera crossed a line of no return, having an affair with Frida’s younger sister Christina, which left her bitterly enraged in disgust, immediately demanding a divorce.  But Rivera apologized profusely afterwards, leading to a quick remarriage.  Over the next several decades, Frida would produce a relatively small yet consistent and arresting body of work, attending her last art exhibition, her only solo exhibition in Mexico during her lifetime, from her hospital bed, having her right leg amputated at the knee a year before she died prematurely at the age of 47.  She enjoyed international success beginning in the 1940’s, but her reputation soared posthumously, beginning in the 1980’s with the publication of numerous books about her work by feminist art historians and others, where her modern attitudes towards sexuality and her ability to openly explore them within her life and work have solidified her status as a truly liberated female queer artist, fearless in the face of power, never limited by gender, always a free spirit roving between the creative energies of both men and women, ultimately becoming an iconic figure having a lasting impact on LGBTQ artists.