As much as other formal or narrative aspects may captivate, a feature film will fail in its attempt to connect with the audience if it does not have some characters to match. Ultimately, they are the drivers of the story and the true catalysts of an emotion without which the viewing experience would end up being empty and meaningless.
Fully aware of this, many authors from different media do not hesitate to put convoluted plots and grandiloquent conflicts in the background to give shape to what is called “character studies”; stories focused on immersing themselves in the minds of their protagonists and outlining their evolutionary arcs in greater depth.
Starting from this base, but without neglecting a very powerful internal conflict, the Brazilian filmmaker Aly Muritiba shapes ‘private desert’; a extraordinary queer drama in which, through his dry look at the society of his native land, he exposes the fragility of the concept of masculinity while recalling that love, prejudices aside, is still love.
question of contrasts
‘Private desert’ is a film of faces, crosses and opposite poles that, little by little, and with an enviable delicacy and precision, end up meeting to give shape to what is undoubtedly one of the best titles that will hit our screens this year 2022. A game of masks that fall under their own weight and in which form, background and characters row in the same direction.
Muritiba’s mise-en-scène, impeccable and tremendously effective, aligns perfectly with the sense of duality that reigns in the film; playing the card of carelessness and austerity in some of its darkest and crudest passages to make way for a rarefied beauty when the story requires it, enhancing an emotion of those that leave with the heart in a fist.
But the direction of the natural filmmaker from Bahia not only shines in his measured calculation of the aesthetic, his planning work is equally round. In this way, the contrast continues to mark the tape, contrasting oppressive reframing, liberating landscapes, staticism and handheld camera under the common denominator of an assembly economy that feeds the organic.
Likewise, the narrative of ‘Desierto particular’ combines a predominant intimacy with an unusual management of the intrigue that keeps you glued to the seat while you wait for the moment when the tension ends up exploding, for better or for worse. If we add to this a change of point of view that completely resizes the second act and prevents it from decaying, the result is two hours that are as intense as they are exciting.
As if all this were not enough, there is still the two jewels in the crown to be praised: the leading couple made up of some simply pristine Antonio Saboia and Pedro Fasanaro. Subtly, effortlessly, and with the benefit of a camera, they breathe life into Daniel and Robson; the two engines of a small miracle in which toughness, hope and romanticism come together to break taboos and make us believe in a better world. Essential.