Motel Destino

Twenty year old “Heraldo” (Iago Xavier) is hoping to leave his seaside Brazilian home and head to São Paolo and make a fresh start. Thing is, his elder brother “Jorge” (Renan Capivara) and he owe the local queenpin “Bambina” (Fabiola Liper) one last favour. “Heraldo” goes out and gets laid in the town’s knocking-shop-cum-motel and awakens to discover that his brother tried to do the job en seul and, well now the young man has to find somewhere to hide. Fortunately, he made a bit of an impression at the motel with it’s owner “Dayana” (Nataly Rocha) and so she agrees to shelter him whilst her brutish and frequently drunk husband “Elias” (Fâbio Assunção) lets him do odd jobs. From here on in, you can probably guess what happens and that’s not without it’s just deserts and irony. There’s some humour to be had, plenty of sex (even the donkey’s get some fun) but as the thriller element starts to kick in the writing starts to become more important and doesn’t really rise to the occasion as it gallops along to it’s conclusion. There is some sexually charged chemistry between Rocha and Xavier but too much of the plot is either implied or just plain missing and in the end, though it’s a good looking and effectively seamy looking production, it disappointingly ran out of steam.

They say sex sells, and that’s certainly true for this film noir erotic thriller from Brazil in which passionate stirrings pervade virtually every aspect of the narrative. In this latest offering from writer-director Karim Aïnouz, the filmmaker tells a story largely cut from the same cloth as “The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946, 1981) but with supercharged volumes of high-octane sexuality splashed all over it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that other than the fact that this is about all the picture has to offer. Indeed, the primary storyline here is otherwise so thin that it’s practically incidental to the rest of the production, a vehicle for limply carrying the underdeveloped plot forward (arguably the only thing limp about it). Essentially, this release follows the misadventures of Heraldo (Iago Xavier), a 21-year-old mechanic with dreams of owning his own garage one day. But the troubled life that he and his older brother, Jorge (Renan Capivara), have lived has caused them to fall in with the wrong crowd. Heraldo and Jorge work as muscle heavies/hitmen for Bambina (Fabiola Liper), an artist-turned-mobster/drug dealer in a Brazilian beach resort town where the demand for recreational substances is high among visiting vacationers. However, when Heraldo misses an early morning assignment that ends up going south because he oversleeps after a late night hookup at the Motel Destino – a cheap, sleazy no-tell motel (in Brazil, the word “motel” is specifically reserved for “lodging venues” that serve exclusively as places for passing intimate dalliances) – he gets himself in trouble with both his mobster boss and local authorities, prompting him to hastily scurry into hiding. He returns to the Destino, where, in exchange for a place to lay low, he arranges to work as a handyman for the facility’s colorful owners, the erotically charged couple of receptionist/maid/resident pole dancer Dayana (Nataly Rocha) and her short-fused, oversexed husband, Elias (Fabío A...