Daniel Nolasco | Netuno (Neptune) / 2017

the beast in us

by Douglas Messerli

 

Daniel Nolasco (screenwriter and director) Netuno (Neptune) / 2017 [18 minutes]

 

Neptune is the last of the short films which make up Brazilian director Daniel Nolasco’s trilogy about far removed planetary worlds, Uranus (2013), Pluto (2015), and Neptune (2017).

     Neptune, who in classical mythology was the brother of Jupiter and Pluto, is basically perceived as the god of both the freshwaters and the oceans, and for Sandro (Norval Berbari), an older man who swims regularly at a local athletic club, Maricon (Leandro José), in fact, first appears pulling himself out of the pool, as just such a god, a much younger man to whom the older reticent male is immediately attracted.

     The two come to recognize each other, but as Sandro’s desire grows more and more intense, Maricon becomes seemingly proportionately oblivious to him. Only once, when Sandro stops his swim because something has entered his eye, does Maricon even seem to acknowledge his presence, blowing gently into his eye to remove whatever might have entered it.

     Yet Sando’s passion grows stronger. He steals a porno tape and watches it. He masturbates for long hours in the shower while conjuring up visions of the younger man. And at one point when he enters a sauna either at the club or in his imagination where a group of young men, including Maricon, are engaged in a small sexual orgy, he watches intensely as a voyeur, replacing Maricon when he gets up and leaves. Even in this instant, obviously, his desires for Maricon are unfulfilled.

     Throughout, director Nolasco intimates that his “hero” is becoming a predatory beast, a macho Brazilian man on the prowl for his prey. And in the manner of Nolasco’s apparent mentor, Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues, he takes this short film as it proceeds into more and more dangerous territory as Sandro finally breaks into Sandro’s house, lays down in his bed, and turns Maricon’s pillow into a fetish.

      Overhearing that Maricon has been invited to a party, Sandro attends it as well, watching intensely as the object of his obsession dances with another man. At one moment, however, Maricon turns, his gaze for the first time seeming to engage Sandro’s as the younger man strips off his shirt. Suddenly, the shy older man gets up his nerve to move forward toward Maricon, crossing the floor to engage him in a dance of sexual lust; but at that very moment, Maricon and his dance companion embrace in their own version of what Sandro might have imagined to be finally his fulfillment of sexual desire.

 

    In a surreal-like final scene, we see the desolate Sandro walking down the railroad tracks to suddenly be faced with two men, one dressed in a leather suit, the other in an S&M tableau, held in a collar as he bends over like a growling dog, the iconic representatives of the fetishist world, revealing, perhaps, the self-punishing universe into which Sandro has spun out-of-control for his unquenched desires.

 

Los Angeles, December 10, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).