Main cast: Antonio Saboia (Daniel), Pedro Fasanaro (Robson), Thomas Aquino (Fernando), Cynthia Senek (Debora), and Zezita de Matos (Tereza)
Director: Aly Muritiba
There are major spoilers, so read at your own peril.
Deserto Particular (or Private Desert in the English-speaking part of the world) was one of the movies that missed out on being in the Best International Film nomination list in the Oscars this year. This led to some degree of chagrin among certain folks online, although a part of me wonders why anyone would care about the Oscars these days.
The fact this was supposed to be the great big Brazilian movie of 2021, in fact, only has me thinking that, yeah, just let the Oscars fade to irrelevance already. After all, this one is a bit of a mess.
So, this movie revolves around two characters.
Daniel is a cop currently suspended with no pay because he beat a rookie into the ICU ward, where he still remains as this movie plays out, and the video of the beating, captured on a phone, ends up going viral and putting pressure on the police department to drag Daniel to court for a trial. He currently cares for his Alzheimer’s disease-stricken father, but with no pay, money is tight and he has to beg for a job as a bouncer in a club.
Throughout all this, his sole source of comfort is his long distance relationship with a woman, Sara, whom he has never met in person. He waxes poetry to her, but she then ghosts him. His messages to her are clearly read, but there is no response.
It is this silence, not his impending trial and his father, that eventually breaks him, causing him to take a drive to the far end of Brazil to meet Sara in person, to ask her why she is no longer responding to him.
Thing is, Sara is actually the drag persona of Robson, a young gay man abandoned by his father to the care of his grandmother when he was younger. He dreams of leaving his small town, and isn’t sure what will happen now that a very determined Daniel is in town seeking for Sara.
Okay, my thoughts on this thing. This is a very picturesque movie. The camera and lighting all work beautifully together to ensure that every scene is a lovely scenery from all the right angles.
Hence, even when for the most part this movie is just meandering along slowly like a self-indulgent fat yak, I never feel bored because I really like looking at the view.
It also helps that Antonio Saboia is gorgeous to look at. Sure, he doesn’t have the hot abs, but not everything needs to be cut and chiseled to be sexy. Oh, his smoldering, brooding looks, his confidence in baring everything including a cute husband-sized willie, and those eyes… You know, Daniel is the perfect example of the brooding, obsessive stalker ripped off the pages of a romance novel onto film. Yeah, that police brutality thing can be a deal breaker for some folks, but still, if the movie wanted to show me 10 minutes of Daniel driving along a lovely countryside, I’m glad it is making me look at Mr Saboia during these 10 minutes.
Things fall apart the moment Robson’s secret is out, though. The movie, as if realizing that it had spent the last one hour plus on smoldering shots of beautiful people scowling at some point off camera, starts to move at a ridiculously brisk pace. This is bad, because instead of showing me realistically how Daniel can go from shagging a woman after making her wear the dress he bought Sara to shagging Robson in a bus depot toilet stall, it just shows that fellow just hopping around from point A to H while skipping several stops along the way.
The “romance”, as it were, consists of trite scenes of these two walking and staring in the distance while waxing lyrical lines that feel more at home coming from a pretentious film student’s monologue in a class presentation. There is no explanation whatsoever as to why Daniel and Robson can suddenly spout such lines, and while the film is at it, poor Robson is also reduced to being a stereotypical Wise Gay Character character that is apparently sage about human nature just because he’s gay.
Oh, and I should point out that the only halfway-explicit sex scene here is a straight one. That’s very progressive indeed for an LGBT movie, as these people are doing their best to make heterosexuals feel included while watching this thing!
Also, how on earth can anyone look at Sara and fail to see at the very least a trans woman? That face has very striking masculine features that give the game away the moment one sees her.
One more thing: for a movie hyped to be a demonstration of sexual fluidity and what not, it sure knows how to drive home that message… by making Robson and Daniel go separate ways after that one shag in the toilet. Maybe Daniel being able to boast “Oh, I did anal with a bloke once!” is considered peak sexual fluidity in Brazil, I don’t know, but come on. A better way to drive home that kind of message is to make them stay together. But I suppose happy ending is considered a no no in artistic circles, so in this case, the need to be all arty-farty trumps everything else.
So, all things considered, I sure love looking at this movie because the main leads, especially Mr Saboia, are so nice to look at. The story though is on the messy kind of meh side, like the plot of a stereotypical gay manhwa that has to rush to a conclusion because the people involved lost interest or gave up midway.
