Cannes film festival
A young man on the run from a mob boss lands an unlikely job in a brutally functional love motel and starts a passionate affair with the manager’s wife
As motel names go, it’s certainly more portentous than “Bates”. But destiny of a sort, shaped by class and money and family abuse, is waiting for the hero and heroine of this movie. This is an erotic noir thriller from Karim Aïnouz; a noir lit mostly by bright sunshine, shot with garish glee by Hélène Louvart. It takes place in a brutally functional love motel near the beach in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Ceará; this is a place from which the couple are fated to be expelled naked, like Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.
Motel Destino is co-written by Wislan Esmeraldo and Mauricio Zacharias and directed by Aïnouz who had a film in the Cannes competition just last year, an atypically florid historical costume drama called Firebrand, with Jude Law as the fleshily hindquartered Henry VIII. This is a leaner, meaner movie and Aïnouz is more engaged. Heraldo, played by Iago Xavier, is a young guy employed by a drug-dealing mob matriarch along with his brother, who is trying to dissuade him from his plans to leave the neighbourhood and try his luck in Sāo Paulo.
Continue reading… Cannes film festivalA young man on the run from a mob boss lands an unlikely job in a brutally functional love motel and starts a passionate affair with the manager’s wifeAs motel names go, it’s certainly more portentous than “Bates”. But destiny of a sort, shaped by class and money and family abuse, is waiting for the hero and heroine of this movie. This is an erotic noir thriller from Karim Aïnouz; a noir lit mostly by bright sunshine, shot with garish glee by Hélène Louvart. It takes place in a brutally functional love motel near the beach in the north-eastern Brazilian state of Ceará; this is a place from which the couple are fated to be expelled naked, like Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.Motel Destino is co-written by Wislan Esmeraldo and Mauricio Zacharias and directed by Aïnouz who had a film in the Cannes competition just last year, an atypically florid historical costume drama called Firebrand, with Jude Law as the fleshily hindquartered Henry VIII. This is a leaner, meaner movie and Aïnouz is more engaged. Heraldo, played by Iago Xavier, is a young guy employed by a drug-dealing mob matriarch along with his brother, who is trying to dissuade him from his plans to leave the neighbourhood and try his luck in Sāo Paulo. Continue reading… Cannes 2024, Film, Cannes film festival, Thrillers, Sex, Brazil, Crime films, World news, Life and style, Festivals, Culture, Americas
