Motel Destino

MOTEL DESTINO, the latest film by versatile, prolific Brazilian filmmaker Karim Aïnouz, is a sweat-and-neon-drenched erotic thriller set in a sex hotel on the northeastern coast of Brazil. When a robbery is fumbled, Heraldo (Iago Xavier) seeks refuge in the titular lodge, where he takes a job and eventually starts an affair with an older woman, Dayana (Nataly Rocha), the bodacious wife of Elias (Fábio Assunção), the motel’s volatile owner. Within this gated venue, filled with semen-stained bedrooms, winding corridors and leering security cameras, Aïnouz constructs a deliciously dangerous love triangle that plays off the private/public allure of sex tourism. Elias regularly spies on patrons through the peepholes attached to each room, which allows one to secretly partake in the fun and potentially bear witness to crimes—or infidelities. Like the seedy and rivetingly voyeuristic films of Brian De Palma, HOTEL DESTINO is defiantly shameless: a sexually-liberated slow-burner fueled by its characters’ libidos set in what feels like a haunted nightclub, where the dancers are all too eager to make love and murder. (Beatrice Loayza)

Karim Aïnouz: O PRESO (1992, K), SEAMS (1993, K), PAIXAO NACIONAL (1996, K), MADAME SATÃ (2002), O CÉU DE SUELY (2006), VIAJO PORQUE PRECISO, VOLTO PORQUE TE AMO (2009, KO-REGIE), O ABISMO PRATEADO (2011), PRAIA DO FUTURO (2014), ZENTRALFLUGHAFEN THF (2018), O SOL NA CABEÇA (2018), A VIDA INVISÍVEL DE EURÍDICE GUSMÃO (2019), MARINHEIRO DAS MONTANHAS (2021), FIREBRAND (2023)