My guilty pleasure at the Berlinale: Praia do Futuro

The torments of the young Aquaman...

 

Praia do Futuro opens under the sun of Brasil, and closes in the mist of Northern Germany.

Beyond geography, this passage is quite meaningfull.
 

As at the end of this film by Karim Aïnouz
– departing from some not very solid, but real promisses

- one remains
with the impression
of having assisted to an evanescent film,

untouchable
but joyfull,

just like that final mist...

 

If this film were born on the times of Fassbinder,

it would have been a marvel.
 

Nowadays,
having to adapt
to the zero suffering policy
of the spirit of our time,
it can only pervade into a neither hot or cold...

Praia do Futuro opens with an event:
Brazilian lifeguard Donato (Wagner Moura)
manages to save German tourist Konrad (Clemens Schick)
from a ferocious undercurrent
on Brazil’s northern coast.

 

He saves Konrad, but not Konrad’s friend.

This film has the merit
of avoiding any didascalia
and any pointless explanation.

Its narrative proceeds by lapses, allusions
and sous-entendus.

Praia do futuro is a beach with dangerous waters,
deep and powerfull.

Donato, nicknamed by his younger

 brother “Aquaman”,

reads well

 the rumour of those waves.
 
Water is his vital element

and the sea is his home.

 It is


only when embraced by the sea
 
that he feels
 
in peace
 
with who he is.  

With Konrad,
 
Donato loses himself
 
in the unknown waters of love.  

As Konrad and Donato

immediately become lovers.
 

They fuck and fuck again,

with high mutual pleasure
 
and a certain grace.

When the German goes back

to Berlin,

he takes with

him his Brazilian boyfriend.

Their relationship grows day after

 day.

 

There is little tenderness, though,

or warm gestures between the two.

Konrad and Donato are always fucking,

always rather hard,

in a sort of a very male variety of homosexuality...

... always like in a sort of an untold male competition,

in order to conquer in the couple

the part of the Alpha male...

...Gay sex

as a continuation

of the war

for the male supremacy...

 ...But  no,

don’t you think of one of these gay films from Northern european countries,

mixing homosexuality and fetichistic images, neonazi and neonibelungic or other...

Thank God,

even if this film unfolds most of the time in Berlin,

the director spares us

the sex caves and all the cheap folklore

that comes with it.

He only concentrates on Konrad and Donato, and he is right.

As Berlin does not do good to their story.

 

Donato feels he is lost, rootless,

he left his familly,

his beach,

his work,

and for what?  

For love?

But is this love,

that thing he has with Konrad?

 

Praia do Futuro touches here to sensitive matters...

It obliges us all

to question ourselves

about what is the price

and which exactly are the choices

made for/out of love...

...We do not know why or how,

but Donato and Konrad drift apart...

...and it is in this new kind of strangeness, in this big chill,

that lays the most noble,

and also the thoughest part of this film.

But it is also here

that the film does not dare

to go beyond certain limits.

The Director should have deepened more the scalpel

on that feeling of being lost..

...on those love-affairs

based on flesh

that tend to soften out..

...on the volatillity

of a certain homosexual desire...

But he does not do it.

He does not want to do it,

or he just cannot succeed in doing it...

...As Fassbinder

does not live here anymore,

for a while already...

... and this is the fast cinema of nowadays, mindless,

that has no back thoughts

because thinking

is a disregarded social category...

...so the Director

abandons the battlefield

and

takes his horses back to the stalls...

But whether the men at the center

 of Praia do Futuro
 

are swimming, running, dancing,

 fighting or having vigorous sex,
 

the physicality
 

of their bodies
 

is mesmerizing.

The film can be sensual,

liberating,

dangerous,

or all three…

Produced with german and brazilian funds, Praia do Futuro waltzes

around the themes

that Aïnouz affectionates,

around the humanity on the move  

(Love for Sale,

I Travel Because I Have to see you,

I Come Back Because I Love You...)...

Aïnouz works attentively

on the composition of his frames,

even though some of his choices appear to be just

smashing aesthetics..

 The film ends
 
with a scene
 
as a replica to the first.
 

The two main heroes
 

and Donato’s brother
 

drive furiously bikes on a beach,
 

no more in Fortalezza,
 

but on the shore of the Baltic Sea.   

A scene that confirms
 
the Director’s fetichism

 
for male homosexuality
 

in the biking version:
 

fast wheels,
 

fetichistic overalls

and helmets,   

as a clin d’oeuil to the gay

 cinema classic

Scorpio Rising by Kenneth Anger
 

(accoladed also by Fellini in Roma).

 

It closes with Heroes,
 

in fact with Herden

by David Bowie,
 

shot at a maximum volume,
 

causinng a fast escape
 

to some film critics
 

already irritated
 

by all they had to endure...

This is a massive film,

failed partly

because of its inability of

 narrating,

partly for not having dared.

But there is also

a lot of good story telling here,

...and I am nonchalantly

electing it

as my guilty pleasure

of this Berlinale 64...

 

 

 

 

 

by g d