It’s possible to buy all the tickets for the very last day of the Berlinale at a special price (6 euros) at the first day of ticket sales. As a result, I ended up getting tickets only competition films (which are otherwise difficult to get) for the last day and made sure we could watch the good ones together (Kraftidioten and Nymphomaniac). That leaves the kind of films I want to see but I doubt anyone else would. “Praia do future” is one of these films because of Wagner Moura.
Praia do futuro
Brazil/Germany 2013, Karim Ainouz, 106’
Donato is a lifeguard at Future Beach when he fails to rescue a man for the first time. While he tries to cope with what happened, he meets and falls in love with the friend of the man, a tourist from Germany. When Konrad goes back to Berlin, Donato decides to follow him. After Konrad convinces Donato to stay, he realizes that he has a hard time adjusting to the cold city without a beach. Years later, when Donato’s brother comes to Berlin to find him, a lot of things have changed.
Death count: 1.
I will forever remember this movie as the one where you can see Wagner Moura’s penis, and I enjoyed the shots of Berlin in the film. Other than that, everything else was rather unsatisfying. I didn’t care much for the main characters’s story, I don’t really understand how and why Donato had the money to go to Germany but his brother had to save money for years to do the same thing. Sounds like Donato ran away with his family’s money. When I came out of the theater, I overheard a couple of women dissing the film – terrible dialogue, unrealistic etc. I didn’t think it was that bad. Au contraire, I thought the film had many sweet aspects and most of its moodiness made a lot of sense. I even thought that the end of the film, where the trio goes to the sea, was thoughtful and done very nicely. But in general, it’s your standard artsy gay film where nothing is explained (it cuts directly from the hospital scene “why don’t I give you a ride back?” to sex in the car) and everything happens incredibly slowly. In that respect, I think it’s a little sad for Wagner Moura to go from “Tropa de Elite” or even the small role in “Elysium” to a film like this.