Directed by Karim Aïnouz, the movie offers a mixture of desire, love, and crime in a story that follows young Heraldo finding sanctuary in a motel by the beach, where he is soon immersed into unexpected situations where erotic and power tension surface while hiding from the gangsters who are after him.
Motel Destino, Portuguese for destiny, is a sex motel where the lives of Heraldo, Dayana, and Elias will cross paths. It is a movie about what destiny has in store for these characters, who seem more than once to be defying their own destiny. Dayana and Elias, the owners of the motel, will find in Heraldo not only a young boy who they like and are willing to help, but also a seed that will bloom unforeseen challenges in their lives. The cast does an excellent job in contributing to the uprising tension between them. Gazes that tell more than enough to interpret their owner's intentions are the physical manifestations of said tension. Sometimes they are the product of desire, and other times of jealousy, but they are always there, ready to cast what they are feeling.
The cinematography of the movie is constantly reinforcing the location and the surrounding elements of Motel Destino. Beaches, palms, sand, swimming pools, a light-colored palette, elements conveying hot days of summer where desire blooms. Desire that also manifests in their bodies, especially when naked, by channeling doses of eroticism that have to be released, but also of their immanent vulnerability. When a day comes to an end and the night takes its place, the location transmits the looming dangers of the relationships bonded by the motel. Barely lighted highways, the neon lights of the motel, and the secrets its walls harbor, open the door for dangerous destinies ready to realize themselves.
A movie about emancipation from what we know constitutes our everyday lives. Between the walls of Motel Destino, the corridors become larger by reason of desire alone, carnal desire in its purest form, but also desire for a better life away from what defines us.
