Futuro
Beach bursts into life
as two men, Heiko and Konrad, ride their motorbikes over beach sand dunes to
the orgasmic repetitive pump of Suicide’s
1977 classic Ghostrider (which has frankly never sounded so good…)
After running into the sea they quickly get dragged out of their depth and
Heiko (Fred Lima) is seen being
pulled underneath as Konrad (Clemens
Schick) is saved by a local lifeguard Donata (Wagner Moura).
After Donata has to break the news to
Konrad in the hospital, he gives him a lift home that ends up with them having
intense sex in Donata’s car leading to a relationship that takes them through
clubs, beaches and eventually back to Konrad’s native Berlin. The only problem is that Konrad is leaving
behind his partner and Donata is leaving behind his little brother Aryton,
which causes some conflict that eventually leads to them having trouble in
their new life in Europe…
The director of photography, Ali Olcay Gözcaya, juxtaposes
beautifully the spacious and warm Brazil with the colder Berlin nightclubs so
that the film has a rich and varied colour palette all shot on 35mm film. As Donata is a swimmer (his brother calls him
Aquaman) there are lots of picturesque shots of the sea as well as clean,
smooth swimming pools that give the character moments of peace amongst more
heated flashy nightclubs and midnight urban bike rides. One particularly beautiful scene in the
centre of the film has the characters dancing to sweaty techno but with a
post-rock/classical music overlay that highlights the different speed of life
in the new city.
There is another beautiful scene that
shows Donata and his fellow lifeguards exercising/training on the beach in
unison that makes them look like a military squadron, once again filmed in
close-up and objectifying the male body as a kind of mirror-image of the iconic
females in ‘90s TV show Baywatch.
Director Karim Aïnouz has managed to make a narrative about courage and
vulnerability without resorting to sentimentality. The characters are unpretentious and yet
compelling and the environments they inhabit are aesthetically and symbolically
beautiful. This definitely deserves to
be seen on the big screen when it is released in the UK on May 8th.
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