Praia do Futuro

beautiful, bitter, useful. a film about relations and choices. delicate poetry and good performances. not comfortable but touching for its honesty, for the landscapes, for the dialogs and for the grace of silence. a film about love and its decision, about guilt feelings and about gestures who are only exercise to know happiness. about the responsibility. and about the past who remains the skin of present. short- a beautiful film. not in ordinary manner but that detail defines it. because it is the work of an admirable director who use the right nuances for a story who might be almost cruel. a gentle speech about the sense of life.

This is one of those films that- when you read the story synopsis- sounds like it will be utter sentimental tripe, lousy with cliché-ridden dialog.

This film is anything but.

This is one of the best gay male-themed films I've seen in a long time. I'd put it right up there with Weekend in quality, but the two films couldn't be more different. Weekend is dialog-driven, Futuro Beach is not. There are long spans where nobody says much of anything; you just observe.

In the beginning, the story doesn't seem like it of holds a lot of promise.

But just wait. When this film shifts gears, it really shifts gears. It's impossible to predict where it's going next, always a sure sign of a good movie, IMO.

While the dialog is sparse and unsentimental, there is emotion all around. The men may be terse with each other, but they're expressive. We don't know if they're in love. That's how unsentimental this movie is. The words "I love you" are never going to be spoken in this modern relationship. What we do know is that there is a dynamic between them that neither wants to abandon.

The themes of this movie are big: life (truly living) and death (just existing). So you might be tempted to assign life-message metaphors to the locale and action. Don't. Just let the film wash over you. This is one of those rare movies that immerses you in its own universe, and by doing so, gives you some insight into your own.

Actually, this movie does not bring anything new to the Brazilian cinema.

I found its story totally lame. What about this synopsis after all? And it solely relies on the (already-way-too-mainstream) shocking sexually-appealing feature.

Also, German seems like the easiest language to be learned by a regular Brazilian, as the confusing time line does not allow to understand how long the main character spends on Germany. Same for his young brother, for whom the language-learning process has - again - a lame explanation.

Score is 3 out of 10 just for the few nice shots, even though the slowness of this movie is definitely boring.

As beautiful a cinematic essay on the subject of fear as I've seen in a while, Karim Aïnouz's "Futuro Beach" manages to cover a plethora of fears common to the human condition - fear of solitude, fear of commitment, fear of rejection, fear of change, fear of death (hell, even fear of water is covered) – and the remarkable human ability to overcome them.

Donato (Wagner Moura) is a lifeguard at a Brazilian Beach who is only able to save one of two German tourists from drowning. Having never had to face death before, he reaches out to the surviving tourist Konrad (Clemens Schick) and soon finds himself in a complex relationship that leads him to question who he is and what he wants from life. Faced with making difficult choices, including the decision to abandon his younger brother and mother and relocate to Germany to join Konrad, Donato finds that his fears have followed him. Eventually isolating himself from Konrad and still unable to deal, he finds himself living a solitary life until he comes face-to-face with his past. Only then can he finally begin the journey of self-acceptance necessary to move beyond the fears that have held him back from experiencing a full life.

Cinematographer Ali Olay Gözkaya's stunning photography captures the natural beauty of the Brazilian and European locations and enhances the story's mood and tone. Performances are strong from the two principals and the two actors playing the younger brother Ayrton, ages 10 and 18 (Sávio Ygor Ramos and Jesuíta Barbosa,) also acquit themselves nicely. The scenes with the two brothers ably capture the special bond often shared between male siblings.

Often jumping from moments of quiet and solitude to scenes with pulsating sounds and action, "Futuro Beach" grabs you from its opening shots of motorcyclists dwarfed by the turbines of a wind farm to its concluding POV imagery of another motorcycle trek down an endless road at dusk. It excels at cinematically and dramatically capturing a snapshot of the often emotionally treacherous voyage that is life.

As a film it is perfect. Each image holds a visual interest, and the use of Bowie and Eno's ' Heroes ' lifts the film to a higher level at the end despite the fact that what went before largely fails. So where for me is the fault ? For all its beauty the casting was wrong. Wagner Moura does not convince as being a man sexually attracted to his partner played by Clemens Schick. But without too many spoilers the story is about a Brazilian lifeguard ( Moura ) who fails to save a life and has a relationship with the dead man's companion ( Schick ). I perceived hardly any connection at all between them, and the sexuality also failed to convince. The film is in three parts, the first set on Futuro Beach and the following two parts in Berlin, where the lovers attempt to continue their relationship, but when Moura's young brother appears events lead to the climax of the film. The young brother is played by Jesuita Barbosa and his presence on screen is electric, at last bringing the film to a strong and vivid sense of life. The scenario helps him, but he gives a lot to make the film breathe, despite the fact that most of the action throughout is set brilliantly against seascapes and architecture ( the former East Berlin is exceptionally good. ) Antonioni could not have done better, and a little like Antonioni there is a void in the film. With the Italian director it was often painful to watch but here it seems to be decorative. The void is of course the lack of connection between people, and in ' Futuro Beach ' it seemed to come from a lack of conviction between the two lovers. Love by the way is never mentioned and this too added to the void. And also I was disappointed by the use of gay cliched images often used in ' Gay ' films. The obsession for shower scenes, and for brief views of male genitals as if they had to be there. In some films the penis adds to the passion in a film, but coy images of the penis in this film did not. Apparently an oral sex scene was cut for distribution. It was not missed, and only the younger brother in a sexual scene with a woman seemed truthful and honest, and had a sense of urgency in it. I am not going into Brazil's shock at seeing one of their favourite actors as a gay man, but the director should have known that and considering the actor was only moderately convincing with his broody, hangdog look should have chosen someone less known. Gay/Queer film works at its best when the actors are not weighed down with a heterosexual following. That is my opinion which others may well reject, but there are actors out there like Felix Maritaud who kind of prove my point. But a justified seven for the beauty of the images and the real sense of place. It took a heterosexual character to wake me up. In a ' Gay ' film ?