Sadly Over-hyped

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

An award-winning screenwriter once told me the secret to his success. It's knowing and never forgetting the essence of film (and this holds true for directors, actors, cinematographers, make-up artists, and production designers as well).Simply put, "A movie is a story that's told with pictures. Pictures that move." Every line, every shot, every scene, every setting, every prop, should be informed by this.Few films exemplify this as well as Karim Aïnouz' "Praia do Futuro." Ainouz has said, "For me film is time, space, and sound distilled in a moving image." It's also, you can see clearly from this film, about bodies moving in time and space and within architecture. (There's one memorable scene of muscular lifeguards training on the beach and then running into the sea that's right out of poet Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric.")Every shot, every scene in this spare, visual style of storytelling is a work of art, which shouldn't be surprising as Ainouz came to film making in a roundabout way, leaving Fortaleza, Brazil (where the opening of "Praia do Futuro" is set) to study architecture in Brazil's futuristic capital, Brasilia. He then studied fine art in New York, took up painting and photography, only to finally study film in graduate school at NYU. He sees himself primarily as a visual artist.This is a film about fear and courage, about risking it all. It's also about displacement and freedom. But, unlike Hollywood films, it never spells anything out. These ideas are dealt with elliptically and obliquely and usually through movement and visuals rather than through dialogue. The protagonists move through water and dance and speed-race motorcycles through breathtaking scenery and they make passionate, sensual love. If you like things spelled out for you and wrapped up with a bow this is not the film for you. Much of what happens, happens off-screen. Characters don't talk about their feelings or reveal much through dialogue and the ending is cryptic. But pay attention: It's the visuals and motion and actions that reveal everything. And about that ending--there is some actual "telling" rather than showing in the end (don't worry, it's not a spoiler) and it's so emblematic of the film I'll cite it here. As we see two motorcycles disappear into the gray mist on a twisting, turning German autobahn, Donato, in a voice-over, addresses his brother, the one he'd abandoned eight years earlier when he left Brazil for Germany."There are two types of fear and courage, Speed. I act as if there is no danger. But you know that everything is dangerous in this endless sea.""Praia do Futuro" invites you to take a swim, take a risk, try your luck. It doesn't promise a happy ending, but it doesn't preclude one, either.

Donato (Wagner Moura -'Elite Squad') is a lifeguard at 'Praia do futuro' and gets called into action one day when two German tourists get into trouble in the turbulent surf. Donato is unable to save him but afterwards meets Konrad - this is the friend of the drowned man and he is gay - just like Donato.Well one thing leads to another and they get romantically entwined. It is a relationship built on lust and though that can survive for a while it always seems doomed to failure. Whilst the inevitable catches up on the love front, Donato seems to have also, not run, but ambled away from his past and family. That is a past with a memory and it is just as inevitable that it too will catch up with him.Now this is a very well made and observed film, with some stunning scenes and a confidence to know when to ramp up the ante and when to let it meander by in a pique of self absorption. There is a smattering of bedroom action, but simulated and nothing over the top. This is a relationship piece more than anything else and covers most of the bases. It has a full range of emotions too and reactions but approaches its subject from the view that there is essentially good in all of us. This is a film for those who want to be made to think and if that floats your boat then I think you will get a lot from this film.

beautiful, bitter, useful. a film about relations and choices. delicate poetry and good performances. not comfortable but touching for its honesty, for the landscapes, for the dialogs and for the grace of silence. a film about love and its decision, about guilt feelings and about gestures who are only exercise to know happiness. about the responsibility. and about the past who remains the skin of present. short- a beautiful film. not in ordinary manner but that detail defines it. because it is the work of an admirable director who use the right nuances for a story who might be almost cruel. a gentle speech about the sense of life.

PRAIA DO FUTURO (Beach of the Future) a Brazilian/German coproduction is another competition entry at Berlin 2014. Helmer Karim Aïnouz a Brazilian-Algerian 48, is a film director and visual artist. Aïnouz's first feature debut, Madame Satã, premiered in 2002 at Cannes. He is from the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará on the Atlantic coast and that is where this film opens before moving to Germany to follow the trail of its lovers, Donato, Brazilian, and Konrad, a German motorcycle tourist in Brazil. Donato is a lifeguard on this most dangerous ocean beach and saves Donato from drowning, then immediately becomes his lover. So this is basically a tale of gay masculine love between two macho types you wouldn't take for gay and that is maybe the message of the movie. "You can't tell a gay from his cover" -- The homosex on screen is so realistic that it looks non-simulated ~ these guys were really into their respective roles as far as sex is concerned. However I found neither actor very interesting as characters so I left soon after the first big blowjob. "Nymphomaniac" this not, but it may be in contention for one of Berlin's famous Teddy prizes -- The Berlin Teddy Bear sidebar is the mother of all the Gay and Lesban festivals that now abound around the globe.