Motel Destino

From Cannes competition lands a colourful, queered and beachside-set erotic thriller in which desire and destiny clash in a seedy sex hotel.

To free himself of debt to a local drug dealer, petty criminal Heraldo is ordered to murder a Frenchman. He ropes along his brother Jorge for the job, but it’s game over when Heraldo is swindled by a woman he wakes up with at Motel Destino in Brazil’s north-east. With his mission bungled, Heraldo shacks up at the sex hotel with its beautiful co-owner, Dayana, on the proviso that he pays his way with odd jobs. While he’s quickly drawn into an affair with Dayana, her ageing lothario husband soon catches on.

In his follow-up to last year’s Firebrand, which also competed for the Palme d’Or, Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz (The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, MIFF 2019) nods to James M. Cain’s erotic thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice but was out to weave a Brazilian edge to Hollywood melodrama and classic genre. Soaked in saturated neon colours and bolstered by the stylish 16mm cinematography of the acclaimed Hélène Louvart (Disco Boy, MIFF 2023; Beach Rats, MIFF 2017), Motel Destino is a consummate, sensual film noir.

“Aïnouz’s tropical noir conjures a potent atmosphere of heat, desire and danger … Motel Destino has mood, rawness and atmosphere to burn.” – Hollywood Reporter