deeper into the woods
by
Douglas Messerli
Matheus
Marchetti (screenwriter and director) O Bosque dos Sonâmbulos (Garden
of the Sleepwalkers) / 2017 [21 minutes]
In
a Brazilian mountainside hotel that appears to be from another time, perhaps
early in the 20th century, a singer (Mere Oliveira) performs a popular Italian
number, while an older man (Tony Germano) dances with a younger woman got in in
partial ballerina garb, Eva (Isabel Lima), and a young boy, Thomas (Celo
Carvalho) stares at and flirts with the young piano player Oliver (Kaleb Figueiredo)
(or perhaps vice versa since we are given no clear identification of
characters).
We
know little about the slightly discolored scene, as if the film itself had faded
over time, and the events are basically inexplicable.
The nurse (Isabella Melo) comes and
settles the old man back into his wheel chair as the dancing ballerina suddenly
disappears.
But at the same time, as night falls, something
even more amazing begins to take place as the would-be nighttime sleepers rise,
one by one, from their beds and in the gardens and woodlands about the place,
begin to live out their sexual fantasies.
Yet it begins with what appears to be
dreams of the past, Thomas as a young boy discussing with an even younger boy
the story he is reading about vampires and how to kill them. In fact, he
describes the denizens of the hotel itself being vampires who come out each
night to satisfy their lusts.
As The Night Creature (Alice Tassara)
summons them, one by one they appear in the wilds about the place.
In
particular, the two cute boys enter into a kind of vow of marriage, drinking
what may be wine, but looks more like blood from a goblet. It is clearly,
however, a kind of vampirish marriage ceremony as they sing, “I shall be yours,
to love and destroy you, come, tear me apart, love me…”
Others coil into sex embraces, as one of
the boy lovers now begins to drink the blood of his companion, the child of his
youth now witnessing the acts and running off in terror, many of the demons of
the night rushing after him.
But the moon has suddenly disappeared,
and the Night Creature suddenly feels betrayed as they quickly abandon her, “returning
to Earth,” the night lovers “vanishing in the wind.” “Everything returns the
way it should be.”
And just as suddenly, we are back in the
hotel restaurant, in the faded-colored world of the past, where the residents
only have stares of desire left to amuse themselves, the only difference being
is that it now appears the boy of Thomas’ childhood is now also amongst the
guests, himself looking with pleasure towards the beautiful piano player.
It
is hard to know for sure what the sexual perspective is of this film. Is it
suggesting that all love is a vampirish activity, a world only of nightmarish
dreams?
I’d argue that for these frozen individuals
of another time, love was impossible to express except through such frightening
visions. They were given no opportunity to actually live in the flesh-and-blood
world of love. They were vampires simply because they couldn’t fully explore
their desires, their true sexualities, and the myth of vampirish arose because
of that very fact, presenting an imaginary world to them of their own lust and
sexual perversities in a society that did not allow such expressions of love.
In a sense, these are all vampires of their own making, of their own private
imaginations. This cure spa does not resolve their problems but only imprisons
them in further isolation from a world of sexual realization, perhaps one of
Mann’s themes as well.
Los
Angeles, August 16, 2026
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog (August 2026).
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