Lucas Camargo de Barros | Ouça o Ciclone (Hear the Cyclone) / 2013

lonesome town

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lucas Camargo de Barros (screenwriter and director) Ouça o Ciclone (Hear the Cyclone) / 2013 [18 minutes]

 

Brazilian director Carmargo de Barros’ film based on images rather than coherent narrative is filled with interruptions to the normal patterns of life, a car navigation system telling its driver where to go, an interrupted call from the driver’s mother, a possible geomagnetic storm in São Paulo, and

one of the character’s personal struggles with grand mal seizures.

     These intrusions all stand in the way of the search for love, found only momentarily in the songs and arms of a transgender woman and a desperate attempt to reach the interrupted mother, who may in fact be one and the same.

     What we do know is simply that the central figure(s) remain(s) in the “Lonesome Town” of the old Ricky Nelson standard, unable to find the way back to love.

      The cyclone of the title refers not only to natural storms, but the storms inside the searcher’s own head, symbolic perhaps of his inability to resolve the two central forces of love. Is true love the mother the voice on the phone worried about his health, a voice that cannot be reached, or the siren song of the transgender performer who so captivates him? Both are terrified of being torn apart by the cyclone of death.

     And where does that leave this or these suffering being(s) whose only few minutes are represented in in this film in the sensation of a slow shower.

     There are no answers in the film to any questions which might arise from what its images and events reveal, but we can certainly sense the near-impossibility of the protagonist(s) to reach out for love through the static of his/their life/lives.

      Actors include André Stern, Sandra Camargo de Barros, Amanda Sparks, and José Henrique.

 

Los Angeles, February 15, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2026).