Cannes 2024: Welcome to Motel Destino, the shocking new film by Karim Aïnouz (Trailer)
Sex, crime and… snake! Here is the program for the return to Brazil of the director of The Queen's Game.
After trying his hand at period film with The Queen's Game opponent Alicia Vikander (Catherine Parr) and Jude Law (Henry VIII) – a feature film shot in English based on theempowerment feminine at the Tudor court and presented in official competition at the Cannes Film Festival last year – Karim Aïnouz returns to his Brazilian roots with Motel Destinoan erotic thriller where the games of desire and power collide within the four walls of a roadside hotel.
No dialogue but noise. A sequence of shots where we see sex (a lot), dancing, guns, a corpse and a snake all in a furious rhythm, a brutal and frantic montage.
In the north east of Brazil, in Ceara, the director's home state, the arrival of Heraldo, a 21-year-old young man at the Motel Destino run by Elias and his wife Dayana will turn their lives and their destiny upside down. The latter is intrigued by this new client on the run, fleeing the police and the gang he left behind. At first physical, their relationship evolves towards a plan for freedom.
Illuminated with neon lights, each shot is filtered by a monochrome color: red, green, blue, yellow. The signature of the filmmaker who declared to France Info early April during an interview: “I love colors. It's like blood to me: color translates a pulse of life.”
It is this vital pulsation which beats precisely in Motel Destino. Selected in the official competition of this 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, this feature film marks the return of Karim Aïnouz as he confirms to Indie Wire :
“Today is a day of celebration. Returning to Cannes with a film that is dear to me is an immense joy, a double return journey. Motel Destino is an insatiable, ardent and sensual tale. I was fortunate to be able to immerse myself in exploring new aesthetic and dramatic avenues. Under the merciless Ceara sun, I took the risk of creating a new film imbued with the sweat, desire, exaltation and pure vitality of those who truly thirst for existence.”
The screenplay is signed by one of his students enrolled at the screenplay school he founded in Fortaleza, his hometown. In the casting: Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha And Fabio Assunção.
