Marie’s Manchester Film Festival 2025 gets underway in a Brazilian sex-motel, full of neon lighting and … erm … sounds. Not particularly erotic, nor much of a thriller.
Motel Destino opens with two brothers enjoying a laddish moment on a beautiful beach near their home in Northern Brazil. Within 15 minutes of the film beginning, one of them will be on the run following a crime gone wrong, full of guilt about what happened.
This is 20-year-old Heraldo (Iago Xavier) who finds himself seeking shelter in a by-the-hour sex motel not far from his home town. Hiding out there, he takes on odd jobs to earn his keep, and begins a steamy relationship with owner Dayana (Nataly Rocha), the two sneaking around to avoid her boorish and abusive husband Elias (Fábio Assunção) from discovering them.
The story is minimal beyond that, preferring to soak in the brash neon lights of the motel’s sleazy corridors and the constant loud moaning emanating from those using the rooms. You can almost smell the sweat and disinfectant.
Heraldo and Elias are little more than stereotypes – Elias the controlling husband who drinks too much and solves problems with violence, while the younger Heraldo has got himself into this situation by constantly thinking with his nether-regions instead of his brain.
Dayana is the most interesting character – younger than her husband but older than Heraldo, she’s perhaps looking for a bit of excitement for a short while and accepts that there is probably no way out of her marriage that doesn’t leave her dead. Nataly Rocha captures the no nonsense weariness of life perfectly.
The other strong point is Hélène Louvart’s camera work – when there is tension, it is built by her use of close-ups on the character, so that the audience doesn’t see what might be brewing over our shoulder, but we can feel the tension. Combine this, the motel setting, and a couple of car journeys, and one can’t help thinking of something like Osssessione or its American counterpart The Postman Only Rings Twice, but Dayana is not as openly scheming, and the characters not at all as thrilling.
Ending on an altogether bizarre note involving a horse, Motel Destino is a film that probably lacks sufficient depth to make it more than just vaguely interesting.
Motel Destino plays at Manchester Film Festival (14th – 23rd March 2025).
Marie’s Manchester Film Festival 2025 gets underway in a Brazilian sex-motel, full of neon lighting and … erm … sounds. Not particularly erotic, nor much of a thriller.
Motel Destino opens with two brothers enjoying a laddish moment on a beautiful beach near their home in Northern Brazil. Within 15 minutes of the film beginning, one of them will be on the run following a crime gone wrong, full of guilt about what happened.
This is 20-year-old Heraldo (Iago Xavier) who finds himself seeking shelter in a by-the-hour sex motel not far from his home town. Hiding out there, he takes on odd jobs to earn his keep, and begins a steamy relationship with owner Dayana (Nataly Rocha), the two sneaking around to avoid her boorish and abusive husband Elias (Fábio Assunção) from discovering them.
The story is minimal beyond that, preferring to soak in the brash neon lights of the motel’s sleazy corridors and the constant loud moaning emanating from those using the rooms. You can almost smell the sweat and disinfectant.
Heraldo and Elias are little more than stereotypes – Elias the controlling husband who drinks too much and solves problems with violence, while the younger Heraldo has got himself into this situation by constantly thinking with his nether-regions instead of his brain.
Dayana is the most interesting character – younger than her husband but older than Heraldo, she’s perhaps looking for a bit of excitement for a short while and accepts that there is probably no way out of her marriage that doesn’t leave her dead. Nataly Rocha captures the no nonsense weariness of life perfectly.
The other strong point is Hélène Louvart’s camera work – when there is tension, it is built by her use of close-ups on the character, so that the audience doesn’t see what might be brewing over our shoulder, but we can feel the tension. Combine this, the motel setting, and a couple of car journeys, and one can’t help thinking of something like Osssessione or its American counterpart The Postman Only Rings Twice, but Dayana is not as openly scheming, and the characters not at all as thrilling.
Ending on an altogether bizarre note involving a horse, Motel Destino is a film that probably lacks sufficient depth to make it more than just vaguely interesting.
Motel Destino plays at Manchester Film Festival (14th – 23rd March 2025).
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