Motel Des­ti­no – first-look review

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.