As he runs freely across the sprawling dunes of Ceará, flitting back and forth between the crisp water and the blazing heat of the Brazilian sun, it is hard to imagine why Heraldo (Iago Xavier) would want to leave this slice of paradise. Alas, things are rarely as idyllic as they seem – even more so in small towns where one is hidden away from the rest of the world but never sheltered from prying neighbouring eyes.
In Heraldo’s case, he’s always under the heavy gaze of his drug boss, an artist who splits her time between painting colourful canvases and taking care of late-payers. Her crowded house is the closest thing Heraldo ever had to a home, made even more intimate by sharing it with his older brother who sings promises of a future living in quiet lawfulness, raising their children close together, brothers made fathers and uncles made godfathers. Those dreams uttered under the vast skies of the Brazilian Northeast are cut short by a violent crime that sends Heraldo into hiding at the titular seedy motel.
The same destiny that lends its name to the shaggy establishment off the highway has seldom been kind to the downtrodden 21-year-old. Such kindness comes naturally to the cheery Dayana (Nataly Rocha) who, taken by this man who is everything her abusive husband Elias (Fábio Assunção) isn’t, agrees to let Heraldo stay in the motel in exchange for acting as the motel’s handyman. And, boy, does he prove handy.
Motel Destino sees Brazilian-Algerian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz return to the language – both in theme and form – of earlier works like Madame Satã and Futuro Beach, prodding at the undercurrent of desire that clouds an already frail sense of morality. It does, however, crucially lack the tangible yearning of such films, much due to newcomer Iago Xavier being miscast in this love triangle that never quite joins its corners. This teasing unravels as a frustrating withholding in a film that sets out to comment on notions of power and possession but can’t keep up with its own throbbing, sensual rhythms.
Still, Motel Destino is shot beautifully by Aïnouz’s frequent collaborator Hélène Louvart, a tropical neo-noir that does away with darkness in favour of a riveting spiral of colour and sweat. Yellows meet purples meet blues, lime green bikinis lying against orange hammocks, and sweat-drenched bodies slithering under a curtain of crimson. The workers at the motel eat, clean and sleep to a soundtrack of constant groaning and panting, the loud, chaotic nature of want and ecstasy as natural to them as the pages on an accounting book. In this depraved Eden, deep moans casually cut through ordinary conversations as two donkeys fornicate outside and chickens peck happily at tufts of dry grass – Aïnouz’s gaze as free of judgment as his characters.
The director is an expert in this precise kind of world-building, one intricately related to yearning – for another, for belonging, for redemption. If Xavier is a misfire, unable to tap into the kind of rogue unpredictability required of a character like Heraldo and never quite grasping the volatile nature of the love triangle at its core, Assunção and Rocha prove the opposite. The actress channels the great Sônia Braga in her easy-flowing seductiveness, untamed hair sticking to the sweat dripping from her chest, a cheeky smile always looming at the corner of her mouth. Assunção makes for a great sleazeball with trunks just as short as his temper, whose inflated sense of self barely manages to keep him afloat. The pair is one of the many pleasures of Aïnouz’s latest, a homecoming that isn’t without its flaws but one that will prove kind to those willing to walk into its grimy, frisky arms.
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